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THE LIBRARY OF CHOICE FICTION. ISSUED MONTHLY. BY SUBSCRIPTION 
$6.00 PER ANNUM. VOL. 2 :., JULY, i8go. ENTERED AT 
CHICAGO POST-OFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MAT'TER. 


Mademoiselle de Maupin 

By Theophile Gautier 



CHICAGO: 

LAIRD .V LEE, PUBLISHERS 

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THE LIBRARY OF CHOICE FICTION 


Mademoiselle de Maupin 


ROMANCE OF LOVE AND PASSION 


BY 


/ 


COPYRfG/^7- 

JliN .^^TRqn ' 

;/■ 


THEOPHILE GAUTIER 


niustrated with Sixteen Half-Tones from designs by Toudouze 


Chicago 

LAIRD & LEE, Publishers 


Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1890 by Laird & 
Lee in the ofiSce of the Librarian of Congress at Washington 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


PREFACE. 

One of the greatest burlesques of the glorious epoch 
at which we have the good fortune to live, is unques- 
tionably the rehabilitation of virtue undertaken by all the 
journals of every hue — red, green, or tri-colored. 

Virtue is assuredly very respectable, and we have no 
wish to fail in respect to her, God forbid ! good and 
worthy woman that she is! We think that her eyes are 
brilliant enough through their spectacles, that her leg is 
neatly gartered, that she takes her snuff in her gold box 
with all imaginable grace, that her little dog bows like a 
dancing-master. We think all this. We will even ac- 
knowledge that for her age, she is, in point of fact, not 
so much amiss, and that she carries her years as well as 
can be. She is a very agreeable grandmother — but she 
is a grandmother. It seems to me naturM, especially at 
twenty years of age, to prefer some little immorality, very 
spruce and coquettish, and very good-natured, with her 
hair a little uncurled, her skirt short rathOr than long, an 
enticing foot and eye, her cheek lightly kindled, laughter 
on her lips, and her heart in her hand. The most mon- 


6 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


strously virtuous journalists cannot be of a different opin- 
ion, and if they say the contrary, it is very probable that 
they do not think it. To think one thing and write another 
happens every day, especially in the case of virtuous 
people. 

I remember the jokes launched before the Revolution 
(that of July, I mean) against the unfortunate and vir- 
ginal Viscount Sosthene de La Rochefoucauld, who 
lengthened the skirts of the dancers at the Opera, and 
with his own patrician hands applied a modest plaster to 
the middle of all the statues. Viscount Sosthene de La 
Rochefoucauld has been far surpassed. Modesty has 
been greatly improved upon since that time, and we 
now indulge in refinements which he would not have 
dreamed of. 

For my own part, not being accustomed to look at 
statues in certain places, I thought, like other people, 
that the vine leaf carved by the chisels of the superin- 
tendent of the fine arts was the most ridiculous thing in 
the world. It appears that I was wrong, and that the 
vine leaf is among the most meritorious of institutions. 

I have been told — I refused to believe it, so singular 
did it seem to me — that people existed, who, standing 
before Michael Angelo’s ‘‘Last Judgment,” saw nothing 
in it but the episode of the licentious prelates, and veiled 
their faces, as they cried out against the abomination of 
the desolation! 

Such people, too, know nothing of the romance of 
Rodrigo save the verse abou^the snake. If there is any 
nakedness in a picture or a book they go straight to it 
like swine to the mire, without troubling themselves 
about the full-blown flowers, or the beautiful golden 
fruit which hang in every direction 

I confess that I am not virtuous enough for that. The 


PREFACE 


7 


impudent abigail Dorine may safely display her plump 
breast before me. I shall certainly not take out my 
pocket-handkerchief to cover the bosom that cannot be 
seen. I shall look at her breast as at her face, and if it 
is white and well-formed, I shall take pleasure in it; but 
I shall not try whether Elmire’s dress is soft, nor push 
her in a saintly way towards the edge of the table, as did 
the pitiful Tartuffe. 

The great affectation of morality which reigns at pres- 
ent would be very laughable, if it were not very tiresome. 
Every feuilleton becomes a pa}pit, every journalist a 
preacher, and nothing but the tonsure and the little col- 
lar is wanting. Rainy weather and homilies are the order 
of the day; we protect ourselves from the one by not 
going out except in a carriage, and from the other by 
reading Pantagruel again with bottle and pipe. 

Good heavens! what exasperation! what fury! Who 
has bitten you? Who has stung you? What the deuce 
is the matter with you, that you make such an outcry, 
and what has this poor vice done to you, that he has so 
much of your ill-will, he who is such a good fellow and 
so easy-going, and who only asks to amuse himself with- 
out annoying other people, if that be possible? Do with 
vice as Serre did with the gendarme: embrace each other, 
and let all this come to an end. Believe me, it will do 
you good. Why, good heavens! worthy preachers, what 
would you do without vice? You would be reduced to 
beggary from to-morrow, if people became virtuous 
to-day. * 

The theatres would be closed this evening. What sub- 
jects would you have for your feuilletons? No more balls 
at the opera-house to fill your columns; no more novels 
to cut up; for balls, novels, and comedies are veritable 
pomps of Satan, if we are to believe our Holy Mother the 


8 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


Church. The actress would send away her lover, and 
could no longer pay you for your praise. People would 
cease to subscribe to your papers; they would read Saint 
Augustine, and go to church and tell their beads. That 
might perhaps be all very well, but most certainly you 
would gain nothing by it. If people were virtuous, what 
would you do with your tirades against the immorality of 
the century? You see that vice is good for something 
after all. 

But it is the fashion now to be virtuous and Christian; 
people have taken a turn for it. They affect Saint Jerome 
as formerly they affected Don Juan; they are pale and 
macerated, they wear their hair apostle-wise, they walk 
with clasped hands and with eyes fixed on the ground; 
they have a Bible open on the mantelpiece, and a cru- 
cifix and some consecrated boxwood by the bed, they 
swear no longer, smoke little, and scarcely chew at all. 

Then they are Christians, and speak of the sacredness 
of art, the lofty mission of the artist, the poetry of 
Catholicism, Monsieur de Lamennais, the painters of the 
Angelic school, the Council of Trent, progressive human- 
ity, and a thousand other fine things. Some infuse a 
little Republicanism into their religion, and these are not 
the least curious. They couple Robespierre and Jesus 
Christ in the most jovial fashion, and with a seriousness 
worthy of praise, amalgamate the Acts of the Apostles 
and the decrees of the holy Convention, to use the sacra- 
mental epithet ; others, as a last ingredient, add a few 
Saint-Simonian ideas. Such persons are complete down 
to the ground; they cannot be excelled. It is not given 
to human absurdity to go further — has ultra vietas, etc., 
they are the pillars of Hercules of burlesque. 

Christianity is so much in vogue, owing to the preva- 
lent hypocrisy, that neo-Christianity itself enjoys a cer- 


PREFACE 


9 


tain favor. They say that it even possesses an adept, 
including Monsieur Drouineau. 

An extremely curious variety of the moral journalist, 
properly so-called, is the female-family journalist. 

He pushes chaste susceptibility as far as anthropophagy, 
or to within little of it. 

His manner of procedure, though simple and easy at 
first sight, is none the less facetious and superlatively 
diverting, and I think that it is worth preserving for pos- 
terity — for our children’s children, as the perukes of the 
so-called grand century” would say. 

First, in order to pose as a journalist of this species, a 
few little preparatory utensils are needful — such as two 
or three wedded wives, a few mothers, as many sisters as 
possible, a complete assortment of daughters, and female 
cousins without number. Next there is required a the- 
atrical piece or a novel, a pen, ink, paper, and a printer. 
It might, perhaps, be as well to have an idea and sev- 
eral subscribers, but with a good deal of philosophy and 
shareholders’ money, it is possible to do without them. 

When you have all this you may set up as a moral 
journalist. The two following receipes, suitably varied, 
are sufficient for the editing; — 

Models of Virtuous Articles on a First Performance. 

After the literature of blood, the literature of mire; 
after the Morgue and the galleys, the alcove and the 
lupanar; after rags stained by murder, rags stained by 
debauchery; after, etc., (according to necessity and the 
space available, this strain might be continued from six 
lines up to fifty or more) — this is justice. See whither 
forgetfulness of wholesome doctrine and romantic licen- 
tiousness lead us; the theatre has become a school for 
prostitution, into which it is impossible to venture, with- 
out trembling, in the company of a woman you respect. 


lO 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


You come trusting to an illustrious name, and you are 
obliged to withdraw at the third act, with your young 
daughter, quite disconcerted and out of countenance. 
Your wife hides her blushes behind her fan; your sister, 
your female cousin, etc. ” (The titles of relationship 
may be diversified; it is enough if they are those of 
females.) 

Note . — There is one who has pushed his morality so 
far as to say: ‘‘I will not go to see this drama with my 
mistress. ” That man I admire and love; I carry him in 
my heart, as Louis XVIII carried the whole of France in 
his bosom; for he has had the most triumphant, colossal, 
irregular, and luxorian idea that has entered the brain of 
man, out of all the numerous droll ideas conceived in 
this blessed nineteenth century. 

The method of giving an account of a book is very 
expeditious, and within the reach of every capacity: — 

‘‘ If you wish to read this book, shut yourself up care- 
fully at home ; do not let it lie about on the table. If 
your wife or your daughter were to open it, she would be 
lost. It is a dangerous book, and it counsels vice. It 
would, perhaps, have had a great success in the time of 
Crebillon, in the petites maisons, at the delicate suppers 
of the dutchesses; but now that morals are purified, that 
the hand of the people has overthrown the worm-eaten 
structure of the aristocracy, etc., etc., that — that — 
that — there must be in every work an idea — a relig- 
ious and moral idea, which — a view, lofty a|f'd pro- 
found, answering to the needs of humanity; for it is 
deplorable that young writers should sacrifice the most 
holy things to success, and employ an otherwise estim- 
able talent in lewd pictures which would make a captain 
of dragoons blush. (The virginity of the captain of 
dragoons is the finest discovery, next to that of America, 


PREFACE 


II 


which has been made for a long time.) The novel we 
are reviewing recalls ‘ Therese Philosophe, ’ ‘ Felicia, ’ 

‘ Compere Mathieu, ’ and the ‘ Contes de Grecourt. ’ ” 
The virtuous journalist has immense erudition in the 
matter of filthy novels. It would be curious to know 
why. 

It is frightful to think that, by order of the newspapers, 
there are many honest manufacturers who have only 
these two recipes to live on, they and the numerous 
family that they employ. 

Apparently I am the most enormously immoral per- 
sonage to be found in Europe or elsewhere, for I see 
nothing more licentious in the novels and comedies of 
to-day than in the novels and comedies of former times, 
and I cannot well understand why the ears of the gentle- 
men of the press should have suddenly become so Jan- 
senically delicate. 

I do not think that the most innocent journalist dare 
say that Pigault-Lebrun, the younger Crebillon, Louvet, 
Voisen on,Marmontel, and all other makers of romances 
and novels, do not surpass in immorality, since immor- 
ality there is, the most disordered and licentious produc- 
tions of Messrs. So-and-so, whom I do not mention by 
name out of regard for their modesty. 

It would need the most signal bad faith not to acknowl- 
edge it. 

Let it not be objected that I have here adduced names^^ 
little or .Imperfectly known. If I have not alluded to 
illustrious and monumental names, it is not that they do 
not support my assertion with their great authority. 

Except for the difference in merit, the romances and 
tales of Voltaire are assuredly not much more susceptible 
of being given as prizes to little boarding-school Misses 
than are the immoral tales of our friend the lycanthropist, 


12 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


or even the moral tales of the mealy-mouthed Marmontel. 

What do we see in the comedies of the great Moliere ? 
The holy instituation of marriage (to adopt the style of 
catechism and journalist) mocked and turned into ridicule 
in every scene. 

The husband is old, ugly, and eccentric; he wears his 
wig awry, his coat has gone out of fashion, he has a bill- 
headed cane, his nose is daubed with snuff, his legs are 
short, and his abdomen is as big as a budget. He sput- 
ters, speaks only folly, and acts suitably to his words; he 
sees nothing and hears nothing; his wife is kissed to his 
very beard, and he does not know what is going on. 
This lasts until he has been well and duly proved a 
cuckold in his own eyes and in the eyes of the whole 
highly edified house, which applauds enthusiastically. 

Those who applaud the most are those who are married 
the most. 

Marriage in Moliere is called George Dandin or 
Sganarelle. 

Adultery, Damis, or Clitandre; there is no name sweet 
and charming enough for it. 

The adulterer is always young, handsome, well-made, 
and a marquis, at the least. He enters humming the 
latest couranto in an aside; he makes one or two steps 
on the stage with the most deliberate and triumphant air 
in the world; he scratches his ear with the rosy nail of 
his coquettishly opened little finger; he combs his beauti- 
ful fair hair with his tortoise-shell comb, and adjusts the 
legs of his trousers, which are of great size. His doub- 
let and hose are hidden beneath aigulets and bows of 
ribbon, his neck-band is by the best maker ; his gloves 
smell better than benjamin and civet ; his plumes have 
cost a louis the spray. 

How fiery his eye and how blooming his cheek! how 


PREFACE 


13 


smiling his mouth! how white his teeth! how soft and 
well- washed his hands! 

He speaks, and we have nothing but madrigals and 
perfumed gallantries delivered in a fine affected style, 
and with the best air; he has read romances and knows 
poetry; he is valiant and ready to draw; he scatters gold 
with open hand. Thus Angelique, Agnes, and Isabelle, 
can scarcely restrain themselves from leaping upon his 
neck, well-bred and great ladies though they be, and the 
husband is duly deceived in the fifth act, fortunate if he 
has not been so from the first. 

This is the manner in which marriage is treated by 
Moliere, one of the loftiest and weightiest geniuses that 
have ever lived. Do people think that there is anything 
stronger in the speeches in ‘‘Indiana” or “Valentine. ”? 

Paternity is still less respected, if that be possible. 
Look at Orgon, look at Geronte, look at all of them. 

How they are robbed by their sons and beaten by their 
valets! How are exposed, without pity for their age, 
their avarice, and their obstinacy, and their imbecility! 
What jestings ! what mystifications ! How they are 
shouldered out of life, these poor old men who are slow 
about dying, and will on no account give up their money! 
How the eternity of parents is spoken of! What speeches 
against heredity, and how much more convincing they 
are than all the Saint-Simonian declamations.' 

A father is an ogre, an Argus, a jailer, a tyrant, a, 
something which at the very most is only good for delay- 
ing a marriage, during three acts, until the final denoue- 
ment. A father is as ridiculous as the most ridiculous 
husband. A son is never ridiculous in Moliere, for 
Moliere, like all authors of all possible times, paid court 
to the youthful generation at the expense of the old. 

And the Scapins, with their cloaks striped in Neapoli- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


H 

tan fashion, their cap on their ear, and their feather 
sweeping the flies — are they not very pious people, very 
chaste, and deserving of canonization ? The galleys are 
full of worthy people, who have not done a quarter of 
what they do. The cheatings of Trialph are petty in 
comparison with theirs. And the Lisettes and Martons, 
what wantons, ye gods, are they! The courtesans of the 
streets are far from being so sharp as they are, so ready 
to give a vulgar reply. How well they understand how 
to deliver a note! how well they keep watch during a 
rendezvous! They are, on my word, precious girls, and 
give excellent advice. 

’Tis a charming society that moves and walks through 
these comedies and imbroglios. Duped guardians, 
cuckolded husbands, libertine attendants, cunning valets, 
young ladies madly in love, debauched sons, unfaithful 
wives — are they not all quite equal to the melancholy 
young beaux, and the poor, weak, oppressed, and im- 
passioned young women of the dramas and novels by 
our fashionable authors? 

And withal the denoeuments, minus the final dagger- 
blow and minus the necessary cup of poison, are as happy 
as those in fairy tales, and everybody, even the husband 
himself, is always as pleased as possible. In Moliere 
virtue is always disgraced and thrashed; it wears the 
horns and, offers its back to Mascarille; morality may 
just, perhaps, put in a single appearance at the end of 
the piece, under the somewhat homely personification of 
police-officer Loyal. 

In all that we have just said we have had no intention 
of chipping the corners of Moliere’s pedestal; we are not 
foolish enough to try to shake this bronze colossus with 
our puny arms; we simply wish to demonstrate to the 
pious journalists, who are shocked by recent romantic 


PREFACE 


15 


works, that the ancient classics, which every day they 
recommend us to read and imitate, far surpass them in 
wantonness and immorality. 

With Moliere we might easily join both Marivaux and 
La Fontaine, those two very opposite expressions of the 
French character, and Regnier, and Rabelais, and Marot, 
and many others. But our intention is not to construct 
here, a propos of morality, a course of literature for the? 
use of the virgins of the feuilleton. 

It seems to me that they should not make so much ado 
about so little. We are, happily, no longer in the time 
of the fair Eve, and we cannot in conscience be as prim- 
itive and patriarchal as they were in the Ark. We are 
not little girls preparing for their first communion, and 
when we play at Crambo we do not answer ‘^cream- 
tart.” Our artlessness is tolerably knowing, and our vir- 
ginity has been about town for a long time. These are 
among the things which we cannot have twice, and do 
what we may, we cannot recover them; for there is noth- 
ing in the world that goes more quickly than a virginity 
which departs and an illusion which takes to flight. 

Perhaps after all there is no great harm done, and the 
knowledge of everything is preferable to the ignorance 
of everything. It is a question that I leave to be dis- 
cussed by those who are more learned than I. The world 
has, at all events, passed the age when we can counter- 
feit modesty and bashfulness, and I think it too old a 
gray-beard to be able to play the child and virgin with- 
out making itself ridiculous. 

Since her marriage with civilization, society has lost 
the right of being ingenuous and bashful. There are cer- 
tain blushings which are still admissible at the first on 
the part of the bride, and which can be of no further ser- 
vice on the morrow; for the young woman perhaps re- 


i6 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


members the young girl no longer, or, if she does, it is a 
very indecent thing, and seriously compromises her hus- 
band’s reputation. 

When I chance to read one of the fine sermons which 
have taken the place of literary criticism in the public 
prints, I am sometimes seized with great remorse and 
apprehension, I who have on my conscience sundry small 
jokes somewhat too highly spiced, such as a young man 
with life and spirit may have to reproach himself with. 

Beside these Bossuets of the Cafe de Paris, these 
Bourdaloues of the balcony at the Opera, these Catos at 
so much a line, who scold the century in such fine fash- 
ion, I, in fact, look upon myself as the most terrible ras- 
cal that has ever polluted the face of the earth, and yet, 
heaven knows, the nomenclature of my sins, capital as well 
as venial, with the margins and spaces strictly observed, 
would scarcely, in the hands of the most skillful book- 
seller, make up one or two octavo volumes a day, which 
is little enough for one who makes no pretension of going 
to paradise in the next world, and of winning the Mon- 
thyon prize, or of carrying off the rose in this. 

Then, when I think that I have met with rather a large 
number of these dragons of virtue beneath the table, 
and even elsewhere, I get a better opinion of myself, and 
estimate that, with all the faults that I may have, they 
have another, which is in my eyes the very greatest and 
worst of all, and that is hypocrisy. 

If we looked carefully, we might perhaps find another 
little vice to add, but it is one so hideous, that in truth I 
scarcely dare name it. Come close, and I will whisper 
its name into your ear: it is envy. 

Envy, and nothing else. 

It is this that goes creeping and winding through all 
these paternal homilies. However careful it may be to 


PREFACE 


17 


conceal itself, it may from time to time be seen gleaming 
above metaphors and figures of rhetoric with its little flat 
viper’s head; it may be surprised licking its venom-blued 
lips with its forked tongue; it may be heard hissing softly 
in the shade of an insiduous epithet. 

I know perfectly well that it is insufferable conceit to 
pretend that you are envied, and that it is almost as 
nauseous as a coxcomb vaunting his good fortune. I am 
not so boastful as to believe that I am hated and envied; 
that is a happiness which is not given to everybody, and it 
will probably be long before I have it. Thus I shall 
speak freely and unreservedly, as one quite disinterested 
in the matter. 

One thing which is certain and easy of demonstration 
to those who might doubt its existence, is the natural 
antipathy of the critic to the poet, of him who makes 
nothing to him who makes something, of the drone to 
the bee, of the gelding to the stallion. 

You do not become a critic until it has been completely 
established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a 
poet. Before descending to the melancholy office of 
taking care of the cloaks, and noting the strokes like a 
billiard-marker or a servant at the tennis-court, you long 
courted the Muse and sought to win her virginity; but 
you had not sufficient vigor to do so, your breath failed 
you, and you fell back pale and worn to the foot of the 
holy mountain. 

I can understand this hatred. It is painful to see an- 
other sit down at a banquet to which you have not been 
invited, and visit with a woman who would have nothing 
to say to you. With all my heart, I pity the poor eunuch 
who is obliged to be present at the diversions of the 
Grand Seignior. 

He is admitted into the most secret depths of the Oda; 

Maupin— 1 


i8 MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 

he conducts the Sultanas to the bath; he sees their beau- 
tiful bodies glistening beneath the silver water of the 
great reservoirs, streaming with pearls and smoother 
than agates; the most hidden beauties are unveiled to 
him. His presence is no restraint — he is a eunuch. The 
Sultan caresses his favorite before him, and kisses her 
on her pomegranate lips. His position is, in truth, a 
very false one, and he must feel greatly embarrassed. 

It is the same with the critic who sees the poet walk- 
ing in the garden of poesy with his nine fair odalisques, 
and disporting idly in the shade of large green laurels. 
It is difficult for him not to pick up the stones on the 
highway to cast them at him, and, if he be skilful enough 
to do so, wound him behind his own wall. 

The critic who has produced nothing is a coward, like 
an Abbe who courts the wife of a layman. The latter 
can neither retaliate nor fight with him. 

I think that the history of the different ways of depre- 
cating any work for a month past would be at least as 
curious as that of Teglath-Phalasar or Gemagog who 
invented pointed shoes. 

There are materials enough for fifteen or sixteen folios, 
but we will take pity on the reader and confine ourselves 
to a few lines — a benefit for which we expect more than 
eternal gratitude. At a very remote epoch, which is 
lost in the mist of ages, very nearly three weeks ago, the 
romance of middle ages flourished principally in Paris 
and the suburbs. The coat of arms was held in great 
honor; head-dresses a la Hennin, were not despised, 
parti-colored trousers were esteemed; the dagger was 
beyond all price; the pointed shoe was worshipped like 
a fetich. There was nothing but ogives, turrets, little 
columns, colored glass, cathedrals, and strong castles; 
there was nothing but damozels and squires, pages and 


PREFACE 


19 

varlets, vagrants and veterans, gallant knights and fierce 
castellans; all being things which were certainly more 
innocent than innocent pastimes, and which did nobody 
any harm. 

The critic had not waited for the second romance in 
order to begin his work of depreciation. No sooner had 
the first appeared than he had wrapped himself up in his 
cloth of camel’s hair, poured a bushel of ashes on his 
head, and then, assuming that loud and doleful tone of 
his, begun to cry out: — 

Still the middle ages, always the middle ages ! who 
will deliver me from the middle ages, from these middle 
ages that are not the middle ages? Middle ages of card- 
board and baked clay, which have nothing of the middle 
ages but their name. O the iron barons in their iron 
armor, with their iron hearts in their iron breasts ! O 
the cathedrals with their ever full-blown roses, and their 
flowered glass, their lacework of granite, their open tre- 
foils, their gables cut like a saw, their stone chasubles, 
embroidered like a bride’s veil, their tapers, their chants, 
their glittering priests, their kneeling people, their dron- 
ing organs, and their angels hovering and flapping their 
wings beneath the vaulted roofs ! How have they spoiled 
my middle ages, my middle ages so delicate and bright ! 
How have they hidden them beneath a coating of coarse 
badigeon ! What loud over-coloring ! Ah ! ignorant 
daubers, who think that you have produced color by lay- 
ing red upon blue, white upon black, and green upon 
yellow; you have seen nothing of the middle ages but 
their shell, you have not divined the soul of the middle 
ages, no blood circulates beneath the skin with which 
you clothe your phantoms, there is no heart in your cors- 
lets of steel, there are no legs in your trousers of wool, 
there is neither body nor breast behind your emblazoned 


20 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


skirts. They are garments having human form, and that 
is all. Then away with the muddle ages, as they have 
been made by the fabricators (the word is out ! the fab- 
ricators !) The middle are unsuitable now ; we want 
something else.” 

And the public, seeing the journalists barking against 
the middle ages, was seized with a great passion for these 
poor middle ages, which they pretended they had slain 
at a blow. The middle ages invaded everything, assisted 
by the obstruction of the papers ; dramas, melodramas, 
romances, novels, poems, there were even vaudevilles of 
the middle ages, and Momus repeated feudal jollities. 

By the side of the romance of the middle ages sprouted 
the carrion romance, a very agreeable kind, largely con- 
sumed by nervous women of fashion and blase cooks. 

The journalists very soon scented it out, as crows do 
the quarry, and with the beaks of their pens they dis- 
membered and wickedly put to death this poor species' 
of romance, which only sought to prosper and putrefy 
peaceably on the greasy shelves of circulating libraries. 
What did they not say? What did they not write? Lit- 
erature of the Morgue or the galleys, nightmare of the 
hangman, hallucination of drunken butchers and hot- 
fevered convict-keepers ! They benignly gave us to un- 
derstand that the authors were assassins and vampires, 
that they had contracted the vicious habit of killing their 
fathers and mothers, that they drank blood in skulls, 
used tibias instead of forks, and cut their bread with a 
guillotine. 

And yet, seeing that they had often breakfasted with 
them, no one knew better than they did that the authors 
of these charming butcheries were honorable men of fam- 
ily, gentle, and mixing in good society, white-gloved, 
fashionably short-sighted, more ready to feed on beef- 


PREFACE 


21 


steaks than on human cutlets, and more accustomed to 
drink Bordeaux than the blood of young girls or new- 
born infants. And from having seen and touched their 
manuscripts, they knew perfectly well that they were 
written with most virtuous ink upon English paper, and 
not with blood from the guillotine upon the skin of a 
Christian flayed alive. 

But do or say what they might, the age was disposed 
for carrion, and the charnel-house pleased it better than 
the boudoir; the reader could only be captured by a hook 
baited with a little corpse beginning to turn blue. A 
very conceivable thing; put a rose at the end of your 
line, and spiders will have time enough to spin their webs 
in the bend of your arm — you will not take the smallest 
fry; but fasten on a worm or a bit of old cheese, and 
carp, barbel, perch, and eels will leap three feet out of 
the water to snap it. Men are not so different from fish 
as people seem generally to believe. 

You would have thought that the journalists had be- 
come Quakers, Brahmins, Pythagoreans, or bulls, they 
had suddenly taken such a horror to redness and blood. 
Never had they been seen so melting, so emollient; it 
was like cream and whey. They admitted two colors 
only, sky-blue and apple-green. Pink was only tolerated, 
and they would have led the public, had it allowed them, 
to feed on spinach on the banks of the Lignon side by 
side with the sheep of Amaryllis. They had changed 
their black dress-coat for the turtledove-colored jacket of 
Celadon or Silvander, and surrounded their goose-quills 
with tufts of roses and favors after the fashion of the 
pastoral crook. They allowed their hair to flow down 
like a child’s, and they had manufactured virginities, 
according to Marion Delorme’s recipe, in which they had 
succeeded as well as she did. 


22 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


They applied to literature the article of the Decalogue: 
<‘Thou shalt not kill.” 

The smallest dramatic murder was no longer permitted, 
and the fifth act had become impossible. 

They deemed the dagger extravagant, poison mon- 
strous, and the axe without excuse. They would have 
had dramatic heroes live to the age of Melchisedec, 
although it has been recognized from time immemorial 
that the end of all tragedy is to kill, in the last scene, a 
poor devil of a great man who cannot help himself, just 
as the end of all comedy is to unite matrimonially two 
fools of lovers each about sixty years of age. 

It was about this time that I threw into the fire (after 
taking duplicates, as is always done) two superb and 
magnificent dramas of the middle ages, one in verse and 
the other in prose, the heroes of which were quartered 
and boiled in the middle of the stage — an incident which 
would have been very jovial and somewhat unprece- 
dented. 

In order to conform to their ideas, I have since com- 
posed an ancient tragedy, in five acts, called “ Helioga- 
balus, ” the hero of which throws himself into the water- 
closet, an extremely novel situation which has the advan- 
tage of introducing a decoration not as yet seen on the 
stage. I have also written a modern drama far superior 
to ‘‘Antony,” “Arthur, or the Fatal Man,” in which the 
providential idea occurs in the shape of a Strasburg pate 
de foie gras, which the hero eats to the last crumb after 
committing several crimes, and this joined to his remorse 
gives him an abominable attack of indigestion, of which 
he dies. A moral termination, if ever there was one, 
proving that God is just, and that vice is always punished 
and virtue rewarded. 

As to the monstrous kind, you know how they have 


PREFACE 


23 


treated it, how they have settled Hans of Iceland, the 
man-eater; Habibrah, the Obi; Quasimodo, the bell- 
ringer; and Triboulet, who was only a hunchback; — all 
that strangely swarming family — all those gigantic crea- 
tures that my dear neighbor makes crawl and skip 
through the virgin forests and cathedrals of his romances. 
Neither grand features like Michael Angelo’s, nor curios- 
ities worthy of Callot, nor effects of light and shade after 
the manner of Goya — nothing could find favor in their 
eyes; they sent him back to his odes when he composed 
romances, and to his romances when he composed 
dramas — tactics common with journalists, who always 
prefer what a man has done to what he does. Happy 
the man, nevertheless, who is recognized by the feuilleton 
writers as superior in all his works, excepting of course 
that one with which they are dealing, and who would 
only have to write a theological treatise or a cookery 
book to have his stage deemed admirable ! 

As for the romance of the heart, the ardent and im- 
passioned romance whose father is the German Werther, 
and whose mother is the French Manon Lescaut, we have 
alluded, at the beginning of this preface, to the moral 
scurf which is desperately attached to it under pretence 
of religion and good morals. Critical lice are like bodily 
lice, which desert corpses to seek the living. From the 
corpse of the romance of the middle ages the critics have 
passed to the body of this other, whose skin is hard and 
healthy and might well injure their teeth. 

We think, in spite of all the respect that we have for 
the modern apostles, that the authors of the so-called im- 
moral novels, without being married to the same extent 
as the virtuous journalists, have commonly enough a 
mother, and that many of them have sisters, and are 
abundantly provided with female relations; but their 


24 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


mothers and sisters do not read novels, even immoral 
ones; they sew, embroider, and busy themselves with 
household matters. Their stockings, as Monsieur Plan- 
ard would say, are perfectly white; you may look at 
their legs, they are not blue; and Chrysale, good man, who 
had such a hatred for learned women, might hold them 
up as an example to the learned Philaminte. 

As to the spouses of these gentlemen, since they have 
so much of them, I certainly think that, however virginal 
their husbands may be, there are sundry things which 
they ought to know. It may be indeed that they have 
been taught nothing. In that case, I understand the 
anxiety to keep them in this precious and blessed state of 
ignorance. God is great, and Mahomet is His prophet! 
Women are inquisitive; Heaven and morality grant 
that they may satisfy their curiosity in a more legiti- 
mate fashion than did their grandmother Eve, and ask 
no questions of the serpent! 

As for their daughters, if they have been to a boarding- 
school, I do not see what these books could teach them. 

It is as absurd to say that a man is a drunkard because 
he describes an orgie, or a debauchee because he recounts 
a debauch, as to pretend that a man is vii;tuous because 
he has written a moral book; every day we see the con- 
trary. It is the character who speaks and not the author; 
the fact that his hero is an atheist does not make him an 
atheist; his brigands act and speak like brigands, but he is 
not therefore a brigand himself. At that rate it would be 
necessary to guillotine Shakespeare, Corneille, and all the 
tragic writers; they have committed more murders than 
Mandrin and Cartouche. This has, nevertheless, not 
been done, and I think that it will be long before it is 
done, however virtuous and moral criticism may come to 
be. It is one of the manias of these narrow-brained 


PREFACE 


25 


scribblers to substitute always the author for the work 
and have recourse to personalities, in order to give some 
poor scandalous interest to their wretched rhapsodies, 
which they are quite aware nobody would read if they 
contained only their own individual opinions. 

We find it hard to understand the purport of all this 
bawling, the good of all this temper and despair, and who 
it is that impels the miniature Geoffreys to constitute 
themselves the Don Quixotes of morality, and, like true 
literary policemen, to seize and cudgel, in the name of 
virtue, every idea which makes its appearance in a book 
with its mob-cap awry or its skirt tucked up a little too 
high. It is very singular. 

Say what they will, the age is an immoral one (if this 
word signifies anything, of which we have strong doubts,) 
and we wish for no other proof than the quantity of im- 
moral books it produces and the success that attends 
them. Books follow morals, and not morals books. The 
Regency made Cr^billon, and not Cr^billon the Regency. 
Boucher’s little shepherdesses had their faces painted and 
their bosoms bare, because the little marchionesses had the 
same. Pictures are made according to models, and not 
models according to pictures. Someone has said some- 
where that literature and the arts influence morals. Who- 
ever he was, he was undoubtedly a great fool. It was 
like saying green peas make the spring grow, whereas 
green peas grow because it is spring, and cherries because 
it is summer. Trees bear fruits; it is certainly not the 
fruits that bear the trees, and this law is eternal and 
invariable in its variety; the centuries follow one another, 
and each bears its own fruit, which is not that of the 
preceding century; books are the fruits of morals. 

By the side of the moral journalists, under this rain of 
homilies as under summer rain in some park, there has 


26 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


sprung up between the planks of the Saint-Simonain 
stage a theory of little mushrooms, of a novel and some- 
what curious species, whose natural history we are about 
to give. 

These are the utilitarian critics. Poor fellows! Their 
noses are too short to admit of their wearing spectacles, 
and yet they cannot see the length of their noses. 

If an author threw a volume of romance or poetry on 
their desk, these gentlemen would turn round carelessly 
in their easy chair, poise it on its hinder legs, and balanc- 
ing themselves with a capable air, say loftily: — 

What purpose does this book serve? How can it be 
applied for the moralization and well-being of the poor- 
est and most numerous class? What! not a word of the 
needs of society, nothing about civilization and progress? 
How can a man, instead of making the great synthesis 
of humanity, and pursuing the regenerating and provi- 
dential idea through the events of history, how can he 
write novels and poems which lead to nothing, and do 
not advance our generation on the path of the future? 
How can he busy himself with form, and style, and 
rhyme in the presence of such grave interests ? What 
are style, and rhyme, and form to us ? They are of no 
consequence (poor foxes ! they are too sour.) Society 
is suffering, it is a prey to great internal anguish (trans- 
late — no one will subscribe to utilitarian journals). It is 
for the poet to seek the cause of this uneasiness and to 
cure it. He will find the means of doing so by sympa- 
thizing from his heart and soul with humanity — (philan- 
thropic poets ! they would be something uncommon and 
charming). This poet we await, and on him we call 
with all our vows. When he appears, his will be the 
acclamation of the crowd, his the palm, his the crown, 
his the Prytaneum. ” 


PREFACE 


27 


Well and good ! But as we wish our reader to remain 
awake until the end of this blissful preface, we shall not 
continue this very faithful imitation of the utilitarian 
style, which is, in its nature, tolerably soporific, and 
might, with advantage, take the place of laudanum and 
Academic discourses. 

No, fools, no, goitrous cretins that you are, a book 
does not make gelatine soup; a novel is not a pair of 
seamless boots; a sonnet, a syringe with a continuous 
jet; or a drama, a railway — all things which are essen- 
tially civilizing and adapted to advance humanity on its 
path of progress. 

By the guts of all the popes past, present, and future, 
no, and two hundred thousand times no ! 

We cannot make a cotton cap out of a metonymy, or 
put on a comparison like a slipper; we cannot use an 
antithesis as an umbrella, and we cannot, unfortunately, 
lay a medley of rhymes on our body after the fashion of 
a waistcoat. I have an intimate conviction that an ode 
is too light a garment for winter, and that we should not 
be better clad in strophe, antistrophe, and epode than 
was the cynic’s wile who contended herself with merely 
her virtue as chemise, and went about as naked as one’s 
hand, so history relates. 

However, the celebrated Monsieur de La Calprenede 
had once a coat, and when asked of what material it was 
made, he replied, Of Silvandre. ” Silvandre was the 
name of a piece which he had just brought out with 
success. 

Such arguments make one elevate one’s shoulders 
above the head, and higher than the Duke of Glou- 
cester’s. 

People who pretend to be economists, and who wish 
to reconstruct society from top to bottom, seriously ad- 


28 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


vance similar nonsense. 

A novel has two uses — one material and the other 
spiritual — if we may employ such an expression in refer- 
ence to a novel. Its material use means first of all some 
thousands of francs which find their way into the author’s 
pocket, and ballast him in such a fashion that neither 
devil nor wind can carry him off; to the bookseller, it 
means a fine thoroughbred horse, pawing and prancing 
with its cabriolet of ebony and steel, as Figaro says; to 
the papermaker, another mill beside some stream or 
other, and often the means of spoiling a fine site; to the 
printers, some tons of logwood for the weekly staining of 
their throats; to the circulating library, some piles of 
pence covered with very proletarian verdigris, and a 
quantity of fat which, if it were properly collected and 
utilized, would render whale-fishing superfluous. Its 
spiritual use is that when reading novels we sleep, and 
do not read useful, virtuous, and progressive journals, 
or other similarly indigestible and stupefying drugs. 

Let any one say after this that novels do not contri- 
bute to civilization. I say nothing of tobacco-sellers, 
grocers, and dealers in fried potatoes, who have a very 
great interest in this branch of literature, the paper em- 
ployed in it being commonly of a superior quality to that 
of newspapers. 

In truth, it is enough to make one burst with laughing 
to hear the dissertations of these Republican or Saint- 
Simonian utilitarian gentlemen. I should, first of all, 
very much like to know the precise meaning of this great 
lanky substantive with which the void in their columns is 
daily truffled, and which serves them as a Shibboleth 
and sacramental term — utility. What is this word, and 
to what is it applicable? 

There are two sorts of utility, and the meaning of the 


PREFACE 


29 


vocable is always a relative one. What is useful for one 
is not useful for another. You are a cobbler, I am a 
poet. It is useful to me to have my first verse rhyme 
with my second. A rhyming dictionary is of great utility 
to me; you do not want it to cobble an old pair of boots, 
and it is only right to say that a shoe-knife would not be 
of great service to me in making an ode. To this you 
will object that a cobbler is far above a poet, and that 
people can do without the one better than without the 
other. Without affecting to disparage the illustrious 
profession of cobbler, which I honor equally with that of 
constitutional monarch, I humbly confess that I would 
rather have my shoe unstitched than my verse badly 
rhymed, and that I should be more willing to go with- 
out boots than without poems. Scarcely ever going out, 
and walking more skilfully with my head than with my 
feet, I wear out fewer shoes than a virtuous Republican, 
who is always hastening from one minister to another in 
the hope of having some place flung to him. 

I know that there are some who prefer mills to 
churches, and bread for the body to that for the soul. 
To such I have nothing to say. They deserve to be 
economists in this world and also in the next. 

Is there anything absolutely useful on this earth and in 
this life of ours? To begin with, it is not very useful 
that we are on the earth and alive. I defy the most 
learned of the band to tell us of what use we are, unless 
it be to not subscribe to the Constitutionnel, ” nor any 
other species of journal whatsoever. 

Next, the utility of our existence being admitted a 
priori, what are the things really useful for supporting it? 
Some soup and a piece of meat twice a day is all that is 
necessary to fill the stomach in the strict acceptation of 
the word. Man who finds a coffin six feet long by two 


30 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


wide more than sufficient after his death does not need 
much more room during his life. A hollow cube measur- 
ing seven or eight feet every way, with a hole to breath 
through, a single cell in the hive, nothing more is wanted 
to lodge him and keep the rain off his back. A blanket 
properly rolled around his body will protect him as well 
and better against the cold than the most elegant and 
best cut dress coat by Staub. 

With this he will be able, literally, to subsist. It is 
truly said that it is possible to live on a shilling a day. 
But to prevent one’s-self from dying is not living; and I 
do not see in what respect a town organized after the 
utilitarian fashion would be more agreeable to dwell in 
than the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise. 

Nothing that is beautiful is indispensable to life. You 
might suppress flowers, and the world would not suffer 
materially; yet who would wish that there were no more 
flowers? I would rather give up potatoes than roses, and 
I think that there is none but an utilitarian in the world 
capable of pulling up a bed of tulips in order to plant 
cabbages therein. 

What is the use of women’s beauty? Provided that a 
woman be medically well formed, and in condition to bear 
children, she will always be good enough for economists. 

What is the good of music? of painting? Who would 
be foolish enough to prefer Mozart to Monsieur Carrel, 
and Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard? 

There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can 
never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly, 
for it is the expression of some need, and man’s needs are 
ignoble and disgusting like his own poor and infirm nature. 
The most useful place in the house is the water-closet. 

For my own part, may it please these gentlemen, I am 
one of those to whom superfluity is a necessity — and I 


PREPACE 


31 


like things and persons in an inverse ratio to the services 
that they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase, strewn 
with dragons and mandarins, and of no use to me what- 
ever, to a certain utensil which is of service to me, and of 
my talents the one I esteem the most is my incapacity for 
guessing logogriphs and charades. I would most joyfully 
renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen to see an 
authentic picture by Raphael, or a beautiful woman naked 
— Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for 
Canova, or Julia Grisi entering her bath. I would will- 
ingly consent, so far as I am concerned, to the return of 
the anthropophagous Charles X, if he brought me back 
a hamper of Tokay or Johannisberger from his Bohemian 
castle, and I would deem the electoral laws sufficiently 
wide, if some streets were more so and some other things 
less. Although I am no dilletante, I would rather have 
the noise of fiddles and tambourines than that of the bell 
of the President of the Chamber. I would sell my breeches 
for a ring, and my bread for preserves. It appears to me 
that the most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to 
do nothing, or to smoke analytically his pipe or cigar. 

I also highly esteem those who play skittles and those 
who make good verses. You see that the utilitarian princi- 
ples are far from being mine, and that I shall never be a 
contributor to a virtuous journal, unless, of course, I be- 
come converted, which would be rather comical. 

Instead of offering a Monthyon prize as the reward of 
virtue, I would rather, like that great but misunderstood 
philosopher Sardanapalus, give a large premium to any 
one inventing a new pleasure; for enjoyment appears to me 
to be the end of life and the only useful thing in the world. 
God has willed it so. He who has made women, perfumes, 
light, beautiful flowers, good wines, frisky horses, grey- 
hound-bitches and Angora cats; He who did not say to 


32 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


his angels, < ‘Have virtue,” but “Have love,” and who has 
given us a mouth more sensitive than the rest of our skin 
to kiss women, eyes raised on high to see the light, a sub- 
tle power of smell to breathe the soul of flowers, ■ sinewy 
thighs to press the sides of stallions, and to fly as quick 
as thought without railway or steam boiler, delicate hands 
to stroke the long head of a greyhound, the velvety back 
of a cat, and the smooth shoulders of a creature of easy 
virtue, and who finally has granted to us alone the triple 
and glorious privilege of drinking when without thirst, of 
striking a light, and of making love at all seasons, a privi- 
lege which distinguishes us from brutes far more than the 
custom of reading papers and fabricating charters. 

Good heavens! what a foolish thing is this pretended 
perfectibility of the human race which is continually being 
dinned into our ears! One would think, in truth, that 
man is a machine susceptible of improvements, and that 
some wheel-work in better gear or a counterpoise more 
suitably placed would make him work in a more conven- 
ient and easy fashion. When they succeed in giving man 
a double stomach so that he may ruminate like an ox, or 
eyes at the other side of his head that, like Janus, he may 
see those who put out their tongues at him behind, and 
contemplate his uidignity in a less inconvenient position 
than that of the Athenian Venus Callipyge, when they 
plant wings upon his shoulder-blades that he may not be 
obliged to pay threepence for an omnibus, and create a 
new organ for him, well and good: the word perfectibility 
will then begin to have some meaning. 

After all these fine improvements, what has been done 
that was not done as well and better before the flood? 

Have people succeeded in dring.ng more than they 
drank in the times of ignorance and barbarity (old style)? 
Alexander, the doubtful friend of the handsome Hephaes- 


PREFACE 


33 


tion, did not drink so badly, although in his time there 
was no ‘‘Journal of Useful Knowledge,” and I do not 
know of any utilitarian who would be capable of draining 
the great drinking vessel that he called the cup of Her- 
cules, without becoming oinopic and more swelled out 
than the younger Lepeintre or a hippopotamus. 

Marshal de Bassompierre, who emptied his great fun- 
nel-shaped boot to the health of the thirteen cantons, ap- 
pears to me singularly worthy in his way and difficult to 
improve upon. 

What economist will enlarge our stomachs so as to 
contain as many beefstakes as did the late Milo of Cro- 
tona who ate an ox? The bill of fare at the Caf6 Ang- 
lais, of V^four’s, or of any other culinary celebrity that 
you will, appears to me very meager and cecumenical, 
compared with the bill of fare of Trimalcio’s dinner. At 
what table do they now serve up a sow and her twelve 
young ones in a single dish? Who has eaten sea-eels 
and lampreys fattened on man? Do you really believe 
that Brillat Savarin has improved on Apicius? 

Could that great tripe-man of a Vitellius fill his famous 
Minerva’s shield at Chevet’s, with brains of pheasants 
and peacocks, tongues of flamingoes, and livers of scarus? 
Your oysters from the Rocher de Cancale are truly rari- 
ties beside the Lucrine oysters, which had a sea made 
expressly for them. The little suburban villas of the 
Marquises of the Regency are wretched country-boxes in 
comparison with the villas of the Roman patricians at 
Baiae, Capraee, and Tibur. Should not the Cyclopean 
magnificence of those great voluptuaries who built eter- 
nal monuments for the pleasures of a day make us fall 
flat on the ground before the genius of the ancients, and 
strike out for ever from our dictionaries the word per- 
fectibility? 

Maupin— 2 


34 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


Have they invented a single capital sin the more? 
Unfortunately, there are but seven as before, a very mod- 
erate number of falls for the upright man per day. I do 
not even think that after a century of progress, at the rate 
we are going, any lover will be able to repeat the thirteenth 
labor of Hercules. Can a man be agreeable to his divin- 
ity even once oftener than in the time of Solomon? Many 
very illustrious, learned men, and very respectable ladies, 
hold quite the contrary opinion, and maintain that amia- 
bility is decreasing. Well, then, what is the use of 
speaking of progress? I am quite aware that you will 
tell me that we have an Upper and a Lower Chamber, 
that we hope that everybody will soon be an elector, and 
the number of representatives doubled or tripled. Do 
you think that there are not enough mistakes in French 
made as it is on the national tribune, and that there are 
too few for the evil work they have to plot? I can 
scarcely understand the utility which consists in penning 
two or three hundred provincials in a wooden hut, with 
a ceiling painted by Monsieur Fragonard, to have them 
jumble and blunder any number of petty laws which are 
either atrocious or absurd. What matters it whether it 
be a sabre, an aspergill, or an umbrella that governs you? 
It is always a stick, and I am astonished that men of 
progress should dispute about the choice of a cudgel to 
tickle their shoulders, when it would be much more pro- 
gressive and less expensive to break it and throw the pieces 
to all the devils. 

The only one among you who has common-sense is a 
madman, a great genius, an idiot, a divine poet far above 
Lamartine, Hugo, and Byron; he is Charles Fourrier, 
the phalansterian, who is all this in himself alone; he 
alone has displayed logic with boldness enough to follow 
out its consequences to the end. He affirms without hesi- 


PREFACE 


35 


tation that men will soon have a tail fifteen feet long, with 
an eye at the extremity. This would certainly be pro- 
gress, and would admit of our doing a thousand fine things 
previously impossible, such as killing elephants without 
striking a blow, swinging on trees without swings as con- 
veniently as the best conditioned ape, doing without an 
umbrella or parasol by spreading the tail over our heads 
like the squirrels, who get on very agreeably without 
gamps, together with other prerogatives which it would 
take too long to enumerate. Many phalansterians even 
pretend that they already have a small one, which is ready 
to become larger, if God but grant them life. 

Charles Fourrier has invented as many species of ani- 
mals as Georges Cuvier the great naturalist. He has 
invented horses three times as big as elephants, dogs as 
large as tigers, fishes capable of satisfying more people 
than Jesus Christ’s three fishes, which the incredulous 
Voltairians think were April ones, and I a magnificent 
parable. He has built towns, beside which Rome, Baby- 
lon, and Tyre were but mole-hills; he has piled Babels 
one upon the other, and raised spires to the clouds more 
infinite than any of those in John Martin’s engravings; he 
has conceived I know not how many orders of architect- 
ure and new condiments; he has designed a theatre which 
would appear grand even to the Romans of the Empire, 
and drawn up a bill of fare which Lucius or Nomentanus 
might perhaps have found sufficient for a dinner of friends; 
he promises to create new pleasures, and to develop our 
organs and senses; he is to render women more beautiful 
and voluptuous, and men more robust and vigorous; he 
guarantees you against children, and proposes to reduce 
the number of the world’s inhabitants, so that everybody 
may be at his ease, which is more reasonable than to 
urge the proletarians to produce others only to cannonade 


36 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


them afterwads in the streets when they multiply over- 
much, and to send them bullets instead of bread. 

Progress is possible only in this way. All the rest is 
bitter mockery, witless buffoonery that is not even good 
enough to dupe gaping idiots. 

The phalanstery is truly an improvement on the Abbey 
of Th^leme, and it definitively relegates the terrestrial para- 
dise to the number of completely superannuated and old- 
fashioned things. The ‘^Thousand and One Nights,’’ 
and the “ Tales of Madame d’Aulnoy,” can alone wrestle 
successfully with the phalanstery. What fertility! What 
invention! There is sufficient in it to supply with the 
marvelous three thousand cart loads of romantic or classic 
poems; and our versifiers. Academicians or not, are very 
sorry trouveres if we compare them with Monsieur Charles 
Fourrier, the inventor of impassioned attractions. The 
idea of making use of impulses, which up to the present 
people have sought to repress, is most assuredly a lofty 
and powerful one. 

You say that we are progressing! If a volcano were to 
open its jaws to-morrow at Montmarte, and make a wind- 
ing sheet of ashes and a tomb of lava for Paris, as Vesu- 
vius did formerly for Stabia, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, 
and if after some thousands of years the antiquaries of 
the time were to dig and exhume the corpse of the dead 
town, what monument pray would still be standing to 
witness to the splendor of the great buried building, the 
Gothic Notre-Dame. They would obtain a fine idea of 
our arts by clearing out the Tuileries as touched up by 
Monsieur Fontaine! The statues of the Pont Louis XV 
would have a fine effect when transferred to the museums 
of the day! And if there were not the pictures of the 
ancient schools, and the statues of antiquity, or of the 
Renaissance heaped up in that long, shapeless interior, 


FI^EFACE 


37 


the gallery of the Louvre; if there were not the ceiling 
by Ingres to prevent a belief that Paris had been but an 
encampment of barbarians, a village of Welches or Topin- 
amboux, the things obtained from the excavations would 
be of a very curious nature. Sabres belonging to the 
National Guard, firemen’s helmets, and coins struck with 
an unformed stamp, that is what they would find instead 
of the beautiful, curiously-chased armor which the middle 
ages have left beneath their towers and ruined tombs, and 
the medals which fill the Etruscan vases and pave the 
foundations of all the Roman structures. As to our 
wretched furniture of veneered wood, all those miserable 
boxes, so bare, so ugly, so insignificant, which are called 
chests of drawers and writing-tables, and all our formless 
and fragile utensils, I hope that time would have sufficient 
pity for them to destroy them without leaving a trace 
behind. 

Once upon a time we took a fancy to build a grand 
and magnificent monument. We were first of all obliged 
to borrow the plan from the ancient Romans; and even 
before it was finished our Pantheon gave way on its legs, 
like a rickety child, and stumbled, like a pensioner dead 
drunk, so that it was necessary to furnish it with crutches 
of stone, without which it would have fallen pitifully at 
full length before the whole world, and provided the 
nations with food for laughter for more than a hundred 
years. We wished to set up an obelisk in one of our 
squares; we had to go and filch it from Luxor, and we 
were two years bringing it home. Old Egypt bordered 
her highways with obelisks, as we do ours with poplar 
trees; she carried bunches of them under her arms as a 
kitchen-gardener carries his bundles of asparagus, and 
cut out a monolith in the sides of her mountains of gran- 
ite more easily than we shape a tooth-pick or an ear-pick. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


3 « 

Some centuries ago they had Raphael, they had Michael 
Angelo; now we have Monsieur Paul Delaroche, and all 
because we are making progress. 

You boast of your opera; ten operas such as yours 
would dance the Saraband in a Roman circus. Monsieur 
Martin himself, with his tame tiger and his poor lion, 
gouty and asleep, like a subscriber to the ‘‘Gazette,” is 
something very wretched beside an ancient gladiator. 
What are your benefit performances which last until two 
o’clock in the morning, when we think of these plays 
which lasted a hundred days, of those representations 
in which veritable vessels veritably fought in a veritable 
sea; in which thousands of men conscientiously cut them- 
selves to pieces; — turn pale, O heroic Franconi! — in 
which, when the sea had retired, there came the desert, 
with its tigers and roaring lions, terrible supers who 
served only for once, in which the leading part was filled 
by some robust Dacian or Panonnian athlete whom it 
would often would have been very difficult to recall at 
the conclusion of the piece, and whose sweetheart was 
some beautiful and dainty Numidian lioness that had 
been fasting for three days? Does not the elephant fun- 
ambulist appear to you superior to Mademoiselle Georges? 
Do you think that Mademoiselle Taglioni dances better 
than Arbuscula, and Perrot better than Bathyllus? I am 
persuaded that Roscius might have given points to 
Bocage, excellent as the latter is. Galeria Coppiola 
played a young girl’s part at more than a hundred years 
of age. It is right to say that the oldest of our young 
ladies is scarcely more than sixty, and that Mademoiselle 
Mars is not even progressing in that direction. They had 
two or three thousand gods in whom they believed, 
and we have only one in whom we scarcely believe at all. 
It is progression of a strange sort. Is not Jupiter some- 


PREFACE 


39 


thing more than Don Juan, and a very different kind of 
seducer? In truth, I know not what we have invented 
or even improved upon. 

Next to the progressive journalists, and as if to serve 
as an anthithesis to them, there come the blasi journal- 
ists, who are usually twenty or two-and twenty years of 
age, who have never left their own neighborhood, and 
have as yet loved only with their charwoman. Every- 
thing tires them, everything is too much for them, every- 
thing wearies them; they are surfeited, blasi^ worn out, 
inaccessible. They know beforehand what you are going 
to tell them; they have seen, felt, experienced, heard all 
that it is possible to see, feel, experience and hear; the 
human heart has no recess so secret that they have not 
turned their lantern upon it. They tell you with marvel- 
ous self-assurance: ‘‘The human heart is not like that; 
women are not made so; this character is untrue;” or, 
perhaps, “What! always love ane hate! always men and 
women! Cannot people speak of something else? But 
man is worn threadbare, and woman still more so, since 
Monsieur de Balzac has concerned himself with them. 

“ ‘ Who will deliver us from men and women?’ 

“You think, sir, that your fable is new? It is so in the 
same way that the Pont-Neuf is; nothing in the world is 
more common; I read it somewhere or other when I was 
at nurse or elsewhere; it has been dinned into my ears 
for ten years past. Moreover, learn, sir, that there is 
nothing that I do not know, that everything is used up so 
far as I am concerned, and that were your idea as virginal 
as the virgin Mary, I should none the less affirm that I 
had seen her prostitute herself on the roadsides with the 
pettiest of scribblers and poorest of pedants.” 

These journalists have been the cause of Jocko, of the 
Monstre Vert^ the Lyons of Mysore^ and a thousand 


40 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


other fine inventions. 

They are continually complaining of being obliged to 
read books, and see pieces at the theatre. Apropos of a 
paltry vaudeville, they will talk to you of almond-trees in 
flower, balmy limes, the breeze of spring, and the fra- 
grance of the young foliage; they set up for lovers of 
nature after the fashion of young Werther, and yet have 
never set foot out of Paris, and could not tell a cabbage 
from a beet. If it is winter, they speak of the charms of 
the domestic hearth, the crackling fire, and irons, slippers, 
dreaming, and dozing; they will not fail to quote the 
famous line from Tibullus, 

“Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem:” 

whereby they will give themselves the most charming 
little appearance in the world, at once disillusioned and 
ingenuous. They pose as men who have ceased to be 
influenced by the work of man, whom dramatic emotion 
leaves as cold and hard as the knife with which they 
mend their pen, and who nevertheless cry, like J. J. 
Rousseau, ^ ‘ Voila la pervenche ! ” * They profess a fierce 
antipathy to Gymnase colonels, American uncles, cousins, 
male and female, sensitive old growlers, and romantic 
widows, and try to cure us of the vaudeville by proving 
to us every day in their feuilletons that all Frenchmen 
are not born clever. We do not, indeed, consider this a 
great evil, but the contrary, and we are delighted to 
acknowledge that the extinction of vaudeville or comic 
opera in France (national species) would be one of the 
greatest blessings from heaven. But I should like to 
know what kind of literature these gentlemen would allow 
to take its place. It is true that it could not be worse. 

Others preach against bad taste, and translate the 

» “ Look at the periwinkle ” (the flower), i. c. “ the summer ip coming.”— 2Van lator’a 
Note. 


PREFACE 


41 


tragic Seneca. Lastly, to bring up the rear, a new bat- 
talion of critics has been formed of a kind not seen 
before. 

Their critical formula is the most convenient, exten- 
sible, malleable, peremptory, superlative, and triumphant 
that a critic has ever conceived. Zoilus would certainly 
have profited by it. 

Hitherto, when it was wished to depreciate a work, or 
discredit it in the eyes of the patriarchal and ingenious 
subscriber, false or perfidiously isolated quotations were 
made; phrases were maimed and verses mutilated in 
such a fashion that the author even would have thought 
himself the most ridiculous person in the world; he was 
charged with imaginary plagarisms; passages in his book 
were compared with passages in ancient and modern 
authors with which they had not the least connection; he 
was accused in kitchen style, and with many solecisms, 
of not knowing his own language, and of perverting the 
French of Racine and Voltaire; it was seriously affirmed 
that his work had a tendency towards anthropophagy, 
and that its readers would infallibly become cannibals or 
hydrophobes in the course of the week; but all this was 
poor and behind the time, as brazen-faced and fossilized 
as possible. The accusation of immorality, dragged as 
it had been through feuilletons and variety” columns, 
was becoming insufficient, and so unserviceable, that 
scarcely any paper but the Constitutionnel,” a pure 
and progressive one, as is known, had the desperate 
courage still to employ it. 

Then was invented criticisms of the future, prospec- 
tive criticism. Can you not see at once how charming it 
is, and how it is the product of a fine imagination ? The 
recipe is simple, and may be imparted to you. The book 
to be considered fine and worthy of praise is one that has 


42 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


not yet appeared. The book that appears is bound to 
be detestable. To-morrow’s will be superb — but it is 
always to-day. Such criticism is like the barber who had 
the following words for a sign written in large charac- 
ters: — 

Shaving Gratis here TO-MORROW. 

All the poor devils who read the placard promised 
themselves for the morrow the unspeakable and sovereign 
delight of having a shave for once in their lives without 
loosening their purse-strings, and for jo}^ of it their 
beards grew half-a-foot on their chins in the course of the 
night preceding the lucky day ; but when they had the 
napkin round their necks, the barber asked them whether 
they had any money, and requested them to shell out, or 
he would treat them after the fashion of nutters and 
apple-gatherers in Le Perche, and he swore his most 
sacred oath that he would cut their throats with his razor 
if they did not pay. And when the poor beggars, in 
miserable and pitiful plight, quoted the placard and the 
sacrosanct inscription, the barber said: “Ho, ho! my 
fine fellows, you are no great scholars, and would do well 
to go back to school 1 The placard says : ‘To-morrow.’ 
I am not so simple and whimsical as to shave gratis to- 
day ; my fellow-barbers would say that I was ruining the 
trade. Come again next time, or the week when two 
Sundays come together, and you will find yourselves well 
off. May I become a green leper if I don’t shave you 
gratis, on the word of an honest barber.” 

Authors who read a prospective article jeering at an 
actual work, alway flatter themselves that the book that 
they are writing will be the book of the future. They 
try to comply, as far as is possible, with the critic’s ideas, 
and become social, progressive, moralizing, palingenesi- 
cal, mythical, pantheistical, buchezistical, believing that 


PREFACE 


43 


they will thereby escape the tremendous anathema; but 
they fare as did the barber’s customers — to-day is not the 
eve of to-morrow. The often promised to-morrow will nev- 
er shine upon the world; for this formula is too convenient 
to be abandoned so soon. While decrying the book of 
which they are jealous, and which they fain would annihi- 
late, they put on the gloves of the most generous impar- 
tiality. It looks as though they asked nothing better 
than to approve and to praise, and yet they never do so. 
This recipe is far superior to that which might be called 
the retrospective, and which consists in extolling only 
ancient works, which are no longer read and which 
trouble nobody, at the expense of modern books which 
occupy attention and wound self-love more directly. 

We said, before beginning this review of the critics, 
that the materials might furnish fifteen or sixteen folio 
volumes, but that we should content ourselves with a few 
lines. I am beginning to fear that these few lines must 
be each two or three thousand fathoms long, and resem- 
ble those great pamphlets which are so thick that a gun- 
shot could not pierce them, and which bear the treach- 
erous title — A word about the Revolution, a word about 
this or that. The history of the deeds and jests, and 
multiple loves of the divine Madeleine de Maupin would 
run a serious risk of being put off, and it will be under- 
stood that an entire volume is not too much to worthily 
sing the adventures of this fair Bradamant. Hence, 
wishful though we be to continue the blazonry of the 
illustrious Aristarchuses of the age, we shall content our- 
selves with the unfinished sketch we have just obtained, 
adding a few reflections on the good-nature of our gentle 
brethren in Apollo, who, stupid as the Cassander of 
pantomime, stand still to receive blows from harlequin’s 
wand and kicks in the rump from the clown, without 


44 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


stirring any more than if they were images. 

It is as though a fencing-master should cross his arms 
behind his back during a bout, and receive all his adver- 
sary’s thrusts in his unguarded breast, without essaying 
a single parry. 

It is like a pleading in which the king’s attorney had 
the sole right of speech, or a debate in which reply was 
not allowed. 

The critic advances this or that. He lords it, and 
makes a great display. Absurd, detestable, monstrous; 
it is like nothing ; it is like everything. A drama is pro- 
duced, and the critic goes to see it ; he finds that it cor- 
responds in no respect to the drama which he had fabri- 
cated in his head on the suggestion of the title ; and so, 
in his feuilleton, he substitutes his own drama for the 
author’s. He gives large doses of erudition; he dis- 
burdens himself of all the knowledge he has obtained 
the day before in some library, and treats like negroes 
people to whom he should go to school, and the least of 
whom might teach men more able than he. 

Authors endure this with a magnanimity and for- 
bearance that seems really inconceivable to me. What, 
after all, are these critics whose tones are so peremtory 
and words so short, that one might take them for true 
sons of the gods ? They are simply men who have been 
at college with us, and who have evidently profited less 
by their studies than we, since they have never produced 
a work, and can do nothing but bespatter and spoil the 
works of others like veritable stymphalian vampires. 

Would it not be something to criticise the critics? for 
these fastidious grandees, who make such an affectation of 
being haughty and hard to please, are far from possess- 
ing the infallibility of our Holy Father. There would be 
enough to fill a daily paper of the largest size. Their 


PREFACE 


45 


blunders, historical or otherwise, their forged quotations, 
their mistakes in French, their plagiarisms, their dotage, 
their trite and ill-mannered pleasantries, their poverty of 
ideas, their want of intelligence and tact, their ignorance 
of the simplest things which makes them ready to take 
the Piraeus for a man and Monsieur Delaroche for a 
painter, would provide authors with ample materials for 
taking their revenge, without involving any work but 
that of underlining the passages with pencil and repro- 
ducing them word for word ; for the critic’s patent is not 
accompanied by that of a great writer, and mistakes in 
language or taste are not to be avoided merely by re- 
proving such in others. The critics prove this every 
day. 

If Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and others of the same 
kind were to criticise, I could understand people kneel- 
ing and adoring; but that Messrs Z. K. Y. V. Q. X., 
or some similar letter between A and Z, should play the 
part of petty Quintilians and scold you in the name of 
morality and polite literature, is something which always 
revolts me, and makes me indulge in unparalleled rage. 
I would fain have a police regulation forbidding certain 
names from jostling certain others. It is true that a cat 
may look at a king, and that Saint Peter of Rome, giant 
as he is, cannot prevent these Transteveronians from 
polluting him in strange sort below ; but I none the less 
believe that it would be insane to write along monu- 
mental reputations : 

Commit no nuisance here. 

Charles X alone really understood this question. By 
ordering the suppression of the newspapers, he did a 
great service to the arts and to civilization. Newspa- 
pers are a species of courtiers or jobbers who interpose 
between artists and public, between king and people. 


46 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


We know what fine results have followed. These per- 
petual barkings deaden inspiration and fill heart and in- 
tellect with such distrust, that we dare not have faith 
either in a poet or government ; and thus royalty and 
poetry, the two greatest things in the world, become im- 
possible, to the great misfortune of the people, who sac- 
rifice their welfare to the poor pleasure of reading every 
morning a few broadsheets of bad paper, soiled with 
bad ink and bad style. 

There was no art criticism under Julius II, and I am 
not acquainted with any feuilleton on Daniel de Volterre, 
Sebastian del Piombo, Michael Angelo, or Raphael, nor. 
on Ghiberti delle Porte or Benvenuto Cellini ; and yet I 
think that for people who had no newspapers, and who 
knew neither the word art nor the word artistic, they 
had for all that a fair amount of talent, and did not ac- 
quit themselves badly in their calling. 

The reading of Newspapers, prevents the existence of 
true scholars and true artists. It is like a daily debauch 
which makes you come enervated and strengthless to the 
couch of the Muses, those hard and difficult maidens 
who require their lovers to be vigorous and quite fresh. 
The newspaper kills the book, as the book has killed 
architecture, and as artillery has killed courage and 
muscular strength. We are not aware of what pleasures 
newspapers deprive us. They rob everything of its 
virginity ; owing to them we can have nothing of our 
own, and cannot possess a book all to ourselves ; they 
rob you of surprise at the theatre, and tell you all the 
catastrophes beforehand ; they take away from you the 
pleasure of tattling, chattering, gossiping and slandering, 
of composing a piece of news or hawking a true one for 
a week through all the drawing-rooms of society. They 
intone their ready-made judgments to us, whether we 


PREFACE 


47 


want them or not, and prepossess us against things that 
we should like ; it is owing to them that the dealers in 
phosphorous boxes, if only they have a little memory, 
chatter about literature as nonsensically as country 
Academicians ; it is also owing to them that all day long, 
instead of artless ideas or individual stupidity, we hear 
half-digested scraps of newspaper which resemble om- 
elettes raw on one side and burnt on the other, and that 
we are pitilessly surfeited with news two or three hours 
old and already known to infants at the breast; they 
blunt our taste, and make us like those peppered-brandy 
drinkers and file and rasp swallowers, who have ceased 
to find any flavor in the most generous wines, and cannot 
apprehend their flowery and fragrant bouquet. 

If Louis-Philippe were to suppress the literary and 
political journals for good and all, I should be infinitely 
grateful to him, and would rhyme him on the spot a fine 
disordered dithyramb with bold verses and cross rhymes, 
signed : ^‘Your very humble and very faithful subject, 
etc.” Let it not be imagined that literature would no 
longer engage attention ; at a time when there were no 
newspapers, a quatrain used to occupy all Paris for a 
week and a first performance for six months. 

It is true that we should lose the advertisements and 
the eulogies at fifteen-pence a line, and notoriety would 
be less prompt and less startling. But I have devised a 
very ingenius method for replacing the advertisements. 
If my gracious monarch suppresses the journals between 
the present time and the publication of this glorious ro- 
mance, I shall certainly make use of it, and I promise 
myself wonders from it. The great day being come, 
twenty-four criers on horseback, and in the publisher’s 
livery, with his address on their backs and breasts, carry- 
ing in their hands banners embroidered on both sides 


48 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


with the title of the romance^ and each preceded by a 
drummer and a kettle-drummer, will traverse the town, 
and, stopping in the squares and at the cross-ways, cry 
in a loud and intelligible voice : ^ ^To-day, and not yester- 
day, nor to-morrow, is published the admirable, inimita- 
ble, divine, and more than divine romance, ‘Mademoiselle 
de Maupin,’ by the very celebrated Theophil^ Gautier, 
which Europe, and even the other parts of the world 
and Polynesia, have been expecting so impatiently for a 
year and more. It is being sold at the rate of five hun- 
dred copies a minute, and the editions are following one 
another every half hour ; the nineteenth has been reached 
already. A picket of municipal guards is before the 
door of the shop, restraining the crowd and preventing 
all disorder.” 

Surely this would be quite equal to a three-lined adver- 
tisement in the “Debats” or the “Courrier Francais,” 
among elastic belts, crinolined collars, feeding-bottles 
with indestructible teats, Regnault’s jujuhes, and cures 
for toothache. 

May 1834. 


MADEMOILELLE DE MAUPIN. 


CHAPTER I 

‘‘You complain, my dear friend, of the scarcity of my 
letters. What would you have me write, except that I 
am well, and that I have ever the same affection for you? 
These are things of which you are quite aware, and 
which are so natural, considering my age, and the ex- 
cellent qualities to be discerned in you, that it is almost 
ridiculous to send a wretched sheet of paper on a jour- 
ney of a hundred miles with no more information than 
that. All my seeking is in vain, I have no news worth 
relating ; my life is the most uniform in the world, and 
nothing comes to disturb its monotony. To-day is fol- 
lowed by to-morrow, just as yesterday was followed by 
to-day ; and, without being so conceited as to play the 
prophet, I can in the morning boldly predict what will 
befall me in the evening. 

“Here is the plan of my day: I get up — that is of 
course, and it is the beginning of every day ; I breakfast, 
fence, go out, come in again, dine, pay visits or read 
something, and then I go to bed, just as I did the day 
before; I fall asleep, and my imagination, not having 
been excited by new objects, affords me but trite and 
hackneyed dreams as monotonous as my real life. This 
is not very diverting, as you see. Nevertheless, I am 
better pleased with such an existence than I should have 

Maupin— 3 


50 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


been six months ago. I am dull, it is true, but it is in a 
peaceful and resigned fashion, not devoid of a certain 
sweetness, which I should be ready enough to compare 
to those wan and tepid autumn days in which we find a 
secret charm after the excessive heat of summer. 

^‘Although I have apparently accepted this kind of 
existence, it is nevertheless scarcely suitable for me, or 
at least it has very little resemblance to that of which I 
dream, and to which I consider myself adapted. It may 
be that I am mistaken, and that I really am suited only 
to this mode of life \ but I can scarcely believe it, for if 
this were my true destiny, I should have fitted myself 
into it with greater ease, and should not have been 
bruised by the sharp corners of it at so many places and 
so painfully. 

^‘You know what an overpowering attraction strange 
adventures have for me, how I worship everything that 
is singular, extravagant, and perilous, and how greedily 
I devour novels and books of travels. There is not, per- 
haps, on earth a fancy more foolish or more vagrant than 
mine. Well, through some fatality or other, it so hap- 
pens that I have never had an adventure and have never 
made a journey. So for as I am concerned, the circuit 
of the world is the circuit of the town in which I live ; 
I touch my horizon on all sides ; I rub shoulders with 
the real ; my life is that of the shell on the sand-bank, 
of the ivy round the tree, of the cricket on the hearth ; 
in truth, I am surprised that my feet have not yet taken 
root. 

^‘Love is painted with bandaged eyes ; but it is destiny 
that should be depicted thus. 

‘T have as valet a species of clown, heavy and stupid 
enough, who has roved as much as the north wind, who 
has been to the devil, and I know not where besides, 


MADEAIOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


51 


who has seen with his own eyes all those things about 
which I have formed such fine ideas, and who cares as 
much for them as he does for a glass of water ; he has 
been placed in the strangest situations, and he has had 
the most astonishing adventures that one could have. I 
make him talk sometimes, and am maddened to think 
that all these glorious things have befallen a booby, who 
is capable of neither feeling nor reflection, and who is 
good for nothing but his usual work — brushing clothes 
and cleaning boots. 

“It is clear that this rascal’s life ought to have been 
mine. As for him, he thinks me very fortunate, and is 
lost in wonder to see me melancholy, as I am. 

“All this is not very interesting, my poor friend, and 
is scarcely worth the trouble of writing, is it? But since 
you insist on my writing to you, I must relate my thoughts 
and feelings, and give you the history of my ideas, in de- 
fault of events and actions. There will, perhaps, be lit- 
tle order and little novelty in what I shall have to tell 
you, but you must lay the blame on yourself alone. I 
shall be obeying your own wish. 

“You have been my friend from childhood, and I was 
brought up with you; our lives were passed together for 
a long time, and we are wont to tell each other our 
most secret thoughts. I can therefore, without blushing, 
give you an account of all the nonsense that passes 
through my idle brain. I shall neither add, nor deduct 
a single word, for I have no false pride with you. And 
so I shall be scroupulously exact, even in trifling and 
shameful matters; I shall certainly not veil myself before 
you. 

“Beneath this winding sheet of indifferent and de- 
pressing languor of which I have just told you, there 
sometimes stirs a thought, torpid rather than dead, and 


52 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


I do not always possess the sweet, sad calm that melan- 
choly gives. I have relapses, and I fall again into my 
perturbations. Nothing in the world is so fatiguing as 
these purposeless whirlwinds and these aimless flights. 
On such days, although I have nothing to do any more 
than on others, I rise very early, before the sun, so per- 
suaded am I that I am in a hurry, and that I shall not 
have the necessary time. I dress myself with all speed, 
as if the house were on fire, putting on my garments at 
random, and bewailing the loss of a minute. Any one 
seeing me would suppose that I was going to keep a love 
appointment or look for money. Not at all. I do not 
even know whither I am going; but go I must, and I 
should believe my safety compromised if I remained. It 
seems to me that I am called from without, that my des- 
tiny is at that moment passing in the street, and that the 
question of my life is about to be decided. 

go down with an air of wild surprise, my dress in 
disorder, and my hair uncombed. People turn and 
laugh when they meet me, and think that I am a young 
debauchee, who has spent the night at the tavern or else- 
where. Indeed I am intoxicated, though I have drunk 
nothing, and I have the manner of a drunkard, even to 
his uncertain gait, now fast and now slow. I go from 
street to street, like a dog that has lost his master, seek- 
ing quite at a venture, very troubled, very much alert, 
turning at the least noise, gliding into every group, heed- 
less of the rebukes of the people I run up against, and 
looking about me everywhere, with a clearness of vision 
which at other times I do not possess. Then it suddenly 
becomes evident to me that I am mistaken, that it is 
assuredly not there, that I must go further; to the other 
end of the town, I know not where, and I set off as if the 
devil were carrying me away. My toes only touch the 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


53 


ground, and I do not weigh an ounce. Truly I must 
present a singular appearance with my preoccupied and 
frenzied countenance, the gesticulations of my arms and 
the inarticulate cries I utter. When I think of it in cold 
blood, I laugh heartily in my own face ; but this, I would 
have you know, does not prevent me from doing just the 
same on the next occasion. 

^Tf I were asked why I rush along in this way, I cer- 
tainly should be greatly at a loss for an answer. I am 
in no haste to arrive, since I am going nowhere. I am 
not afraid of being late, since I have no engagement. 
There is no one waiting for me, and I have no reason 
for being in a hurry here. 

^Ts it an opportunity for loving, an adventure, a 
woman, an idea or a fortune, something which is wanting 
to my life, and which I seek without accounting to my- 
self for it, but impelled by a vague instinct ? Is it my 
existence which desires to complete itself? Is it the 
wish to emerge from my home and from myself, the 
weariness of my present life and the longing for another ? 
It is something of this, and perhaps all of this put to- 
gether. It is always a very unpleasant condition, a 
feverish irritation, which is usually succeeded by the 
dullest atony. 

often have an idea, that if I had set out an hour 
earlier, or had increased my pace, I should have arrived 
in time ; that, while I was passing down one street, the 
object of my search was passing down the other, and 
that a block of vehicles was sufficient to make me miss 
what I have been pursuing quite at random for so long. 
You cannot imagine the sadness and the deep despair 
into which I fall when I see that all this ends in nothing, 
and that my youth is passing away with no prospect 
opening up before me ; then all my idle passions growl 


54 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


dully in my heart, and prey upon themselves for lack of 
other food, like beasts in a menagerie that the keeper 
has forgotten to feed. 

‘‘In spite of the stifled and secret disappointments of 
every day, there is something within me which resists 
and will not die. I have no hope, for hope implies de- 
sire, a certain disposition for wishing that things should 
turn out in one way rather than in another. I desire 
nothing, for I desire everything. I do not hope, or rath- 
er I hope no longer ; — that is too silly, and it is quite 
the same to me whether a thing happens or not. I am 
waiting, and for what ? I do not know, but I am waiting. 

“It is a tremulous waiting, full of impatience, broken 
by starts and nervous movements, as must be that of a 
lover who awaits his mistress. Nothing comes ; I grow 
furious, or begin to weep. I wait for the heavens to open 
and an angel to descend with a revelation to me, for a 
revolution to break out and a throne to be given me, for 
one of Raphael’s virgins to leave the canvas and come to 
embrace me, for relations, whom I do not possess, to die 
and leave what will enable me to sail my fancy on a river 
of gold, for a hippogriff to take me and carry me into 
regions unknown. But, whatever I am waiting for, it is 
assuredly nothing usual and commonplace. 

“This has reached such a pitch, that, when I come in, 
I never fail to say : ‘No one has come ? There is no let- 
ter for me ? No news ?’ I know perfectly well that there 
is nothing, and that there can be nothing. It is all the 
same, I am always greatly surprised and disappointed on 
receiving the customary reply: ‘No, sir, nothing at all.’ 

“Sometimes — but this is seldom — the idea takes a 
more definite form. It will be some beautiful woman 
whom I do not know, and who does not know me, whom 
I have met at the theatre or at church, and who has not 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


55 


heeded me in the least. I go over the whole house, and 
until I have opened the door of the last room — I scarcely 
dare tell you, it is so foolish — I hope that she has come, 
and that she is there. This is not conceit on my part. I 
have so little of the coxcomb about me, that several 
women, whom I believed very indiffierent to me, and 
without any opinion in particular respecting me, have, so 
others tell me, been greatly prepossessed in my favor. 
It has a different origin. 

“When I am not dulled by weariness and discourage- 
ment, my soul awakes and recovers all its former vigor. 
I hope, I love, I desire, and so violent are my desires, 
that I imagine that they will draw everything to them, as 
a powerful magnet attracts particles of iron, even when 
they are at a great distance from it. This is why I wait 
for the things I wish for, instead of going to them, and 
frequently neglect the most favorable opportunities that 
are opened up to my hopes. Another would write the 
most amorous note in the world to the divinity of his 
heart, or would seek for an opportunity to approach her. 
As for me, I ask the messenger for the reply to a letter 
which I have not written, and spend my time construct- 
ing the most wonderful situations in my head for bring- 
ing me in the most favorable and most unexpected light 
under the notice of her whom I love. A book might be 
made larger and more ingenious than the ‘Stratagems of 
Polybius’ of all the stratagems which I imagine for in- 
troducing myself to her and revealing my passion. Gen- 
erally, it would only be necessary to say to one of my 
friends: ‘Introduce me to Madame So-and-so,’ and to 
pay a compliment drawn from mythology and suitably 
punctuated with sighs. 

“ To listen to all this, one would think me fit for a mad- 
house ; nevertheless, I am a rational fellow enough, and 


56 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


I have not put many of my follies into practice. All this 
passes in the recesses of my soul, and all these absurd 
ideas are buried very carefully deep within me ; on the 
outside nothing is to be seen, and I have the reputation 
of being a placid and cold young man, indifferent to 
women, and without interest in things belonging to his 
years ; which is as remote from the truth as the judg- 
ments of the world usually are. 

“Nevertheless, in spite of all my discouragements, 
some of my desires have been realized, and so little joy 
has been given me by their fulfillment, that I dread the 
fulfillment of the rest. You remember the childish eager- 
ness with which I longed to have a horse of my own \ 
my mother has given me one quite recently ; he is as 
black as ebony, with a little white star on his forehead, 
with flowing mane, glossy coat, and slender legs, just as 
I wished him to be. When they brought him to me, it 
gave me such a shock, that I remained quite a quarter of 
an hour very pale and unable to compose myself. Then 
I mounted, and, without speaking a single word, set off at 
full gallop, and for more than an hour went straight across 
country in an ecstasy difficult to conceive. I did the same 
every day for a week, and I really do not know how it 
was that I did not kill him or at least break his wind. 
By degrees all this great eagerness died away, I brought 
my horse to a trot, then to a walk, and now I have come 
to ride him with such indifference, that he often stops 
and I do not notice it. Pleasure has become habit more 
quickly than I could have thought possible. 

“As to Ferragus — that is the name I have given him 
— he is really the most charming animal that one could 
see. He has tufts on his feet like eagle’s down ; he is 
as lively as a goat and as quiet as a lamb. You will have 
the greatest pleasure in galloping him when you come 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


57 


here \ and, although my mania for riding has passed 
away, I am still very fond of him, for he is a horse of an 
excellent disposition, and I sincerely prefer him to many 
human beings. If you only heard how joyfully he neighs 
when I go to see him in the stable, and with what intel- 
ligent eyes he looks at me ! I confess that I am touched 
by these tokens of affection, and that I take him by the 
neck and embrace him with as much tenderness, on my 
word, as if he were a beautiful girl. 

had also another desire, more keen, more eager, 
more continually awake, more dearly cherished, and for 
which I had built in my soul an enchanting castle of 
cards, a palace of chimeras, that was often destroyed but 
raised again with desperate constancy; it was to have a 
mistress — a mistress quite my own — like the horse. I 
do not know whether the fulfillment of this dream would 
have found me so soon cold as the fulfillment of the 
other; I doubt it. But perhaps I am wrong, and shall be 
tired of it as soon. Owing to my peculiar disposition, I 
desire a thing so frantically, without, however, making 
any effort to procure it, that if by chance, or otherwise, I 
attain the object of my wish, I have such a moral lum- 
bago, and am so worn out, that I am seized with swoon- 
ings, and have not energy enough left to enjoy it ; hence 
things which come to me without my wishing for them 
generally give me more pleasure than those which I have 
coveted most strongly. 

^‘Ihave not, therefore, as yet had a mistress, and 
my whole desire is to have one. It is an idea that tor- 
ments me strangely ; it is not an effervescence of temper- 
ament, a boiling of the blood, the first burst of puberty. 
It is not woman that I want, but a woman, a mistress; I 
want her, I shall have her, and shortly; if I did not suc- 
ceed I confess to you that I should never get over it, and 


58 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


that I should have an inward timidity, a dull discourage- 
ment, which would exercise a serious influence upon the 
rest of my life. I should consider myself defective in 
certain respects, inharmonious or incomplete, deformed 
in mind or body; for after all my requirement is a just 
one, and nature owes it to every man. So long as I 
have not attained my end, I shall look upon myself 
merely as a child, and I shall not have the confidence in 
myself which I ought to have. A mistress is to me what 
the toga virilis was to the young Roman. 

‘‘I see so many beautiful women in the possession of 
men who are ignoble in every respect, and scarcely fit to 
be their lackeys, that I blush for them, and for myself. 
It gives me a pitiful opinion of women to see them wast- 
ing their affection on blackguards who despise and deceive 
them, instead of giving themselves to some loyal and 
sincere young fellow who would esteem himself very 
fortunate, and would worship them on his knees; to my- 
self, for instance. It is true that men of the former 
species obstruct the drawing-rooms, show themselves off 
before every one, and are always lounging on the back of 
some easy chair, while I remain at home, my forehead 
pressed against the window pane, watching the river 
steam and the mist rise, while silently erecting in my 
heart the perfumed sanctuary, the marvellous temple in 
which I am to lodge the future idol of my soul. A chaste 
and poetical occupation, and one for which women are 
as little grateful to you as may be. 

“Women have little liking for dreamers, and peculiarly 
esteem those who put their ideas into practice. After 
all, they are right. Obliged by their education and their 
social position to keep silence and to wait, they naturally 
prefer those who come to them and speak, and thus re- 
lieve them from a false and tiresome position. I am 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UP IN 


59 


quite sensible of this; yet never in my life shall I be able 
to take it upon me, as I see many others do, to rise from 
my seat, cross a drawing-room, and say unexpectedly to 
a woman: ^Your dress becomes you like an angel,’ or: 
‘Your eyes are particularly bright this evening.’ 

“All this does not prevent me from positively wanting 
a mistress. I do not know who it will be, but I see none 
among the women of my acquaintance who could suit- 
ably fill this dignified position. I find that they possess 
very few of the qualities I require. Those who would 
be young enough are wanting in beauty or intellectual 
charm; those who are beautiful and young are basely and 
forbiddingly virtuous, or lack the necessary freedom; 
and then there is always some husband, some brother, a 
mother or aunt, somebody or other, with big eyes and 
large ears, who must be wheedled or thrown out of the 
window. Every rose has its thorn, and every woman 
has a swarm of relations who must be carefully cleared 
away, if we wish to pluck some day the fruit of her 
beauty. There is not one of them, even to country 
cousins, of the third degree whom we have never seen, 
that does not wish to preserve the spotless touch of their 
dear cousin in all its whiteness. This is nauseous, and 
I shall never have the patience to pull up all the weeds, 
and lop away all the briars which fatally obstruct the ap- 
proaches to a pretty woman. 

“ I am not fond of mammas, and I like the young girls 
still less. Further, I must confess that married women 
have but a very slight attraction for me. They involve 
a confusion and a mingling which are revolting to me; I 
cannot tolerate the- idea of division. The woman who 
has a husband and a lover is a prostitute for one of them, 
and often for both; and, besides, I could never consent 
to yield the first place to another. My natural pride can- 


6o 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 


not stoop to such a degradation. I shall never go because 
another man is coming. Though the woman were to be 
compromised and lost, and we were to fight with knives 
each with a foot upon her body, I should remain. Pri- 
vate staircases, cupboards, closets, and all the machinery 
for adultery v/ould be of little service with me. 

‘T am not much smitten with what is called maidenly 
ingenuousness, youthful innocence, purity of heart, and 
other charming things which in verse are most effective ; 
that I call simply nonsense, ignorance, imbecility, or 
hypocrisy. The maidenly ingenuousness which consists 
in sitting on the very edge of an easy chair, with arms 
pressed close to the body, and eyes fixed on the point of 
the corset, and in not speaking without permission from 
its grand-parents, the innocence which has a monopoly 
of uncurled hair and white frocks, the purity of heart 
which wears its dress high up at the neck because it has 
as yet neither shoulders nor breast to show, do not, in 
truth, appear wonderfully agreeable to me. 

do not care much for teaching little simpletons to 
spell out the alphabet of love. I am neither old enough 
nor depraved enough for that ; besides, I should succeed 
badly at it, for I never could show anybody anything, 
even what I knew best myself. I prefer women who 
read fluently, we arrive sooner at the end of the chapter; 
- and in everything, but especially in love, the end is what 
we have to consider. In this respect, I am rather like 
those people who begin a novel at the wrong end, read 
the catastrophe first of all, and then go backwards to the 
first page. This mode of reading and loving has its 
charm. Details are relished more when we are at peace 
concerning the end, and the inversion introduces the un- 
forseen. 

“Young girls then, and married women are excluded 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


6i 


from the category. It must, therefore, be among the 
widows that we are to choose our divinity. Alas ! though 
nothing else is left to us, I greatly fear neither will 
they afford us what we wish. 

If I happened to love a pale narcissus bathed in a 
tepid dew of tears, and bending with melancholy grace 
over the new marble tomb of some happily and recently 
departed husband, I should certainly, and in a very 
short while, be as miserable as was the defunct during 
his lifetime. Widows, however young and charming 
they may be, have a terrible drawback which other 
women are without ; if you are not on the very best terms 
with them, and a cloud passes across the heaven of your 
love, they tell you at once with a little superlative and 
contemptuous air — 

'^^Ah! how strange you are to-day! It is just like 
what he was. When we quarrelled, he used to speak to 
me in the very same way ; it is curious, but you have 
the same tone of voice and the same look ; when you are 
out of temper, you cannot imagine how like my husband 
you are ; it is frightful.’ 

‘‘It is pleasant to have things of this sort said to your 
very face ! There are some even who are impudent 
enough to praise the departed one like an epitaph, and to 
extol his heart and his leg at the expense of your leg and 
your heart. With women who have only one or more 
lovers, you have at least the unspeakable advantage of 
never hearing about your predecessor, and this is a con- 
sideration of no ordinary interest. Women have too 
great a regard for what is appropriate and legitimate not 
to observe a dilligent silence in such an event, and all 
matters of the kind are consigned to oblivion as soon as 
possible. It is an understood thing that a man is always 
a woman’s first lover. 


62 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPLN 


“I do not think that an aversion so well founded ad- 
mits of any serious reply. It is not that I consider 
widows altogether devoid of charm, when they are young 
and pretty and have not yet laid aside their mourning. 
They have little languishing airs, little ways of letting 
the arms droop, of arching the neck and of bridling up like 
unmated turtle-doves; a heap of charming affectations 
sweetly veiled beneath the transparency of crape, a well- 
ordered affectation of despair, skillfully managed sighs, 
and tears which fall so opportunely and lend such lustre 
to the eyes ! 

^ ‘Truly, next to wine — perhaps even before it — the 
liquid I love best to drink is a beautiful tear, clear and 
limpid, trembling at the tip of a dark or a blonde eye- 
lash. What means are there of resisting that ? We do 
not resist it ; and then black is so becoming to women ! 
A white skin, poetry apart, turns to ivory, snow, milk, 
alabaster, to everything spotless that there is in the world 
for the use of composers of madrigals ; while a dark 
skin has but a dash of brown that is full of vivacity and 
fire. 

“Mourning is a happy opportunity for a woman, and 
the reason I shall never marry, is the fear lest my wife 
should get rid of me in order to go into mourning for me. 
There are, however, some women who cannot turn their 
sorrow to account, and who weep in such a way that they 
make their noses red, and distort their features like the 
faces that we see on fountains; this is a serious danger. 
There is need of many charms and much art to weep 
agreeably; otherwise, there is a risk of not being com- 
forted for a long time. Yet notwithstanding the pleasure 
of making some Artemisia faithless to the shade of her 
Mausolus, I cannot really choose from among this swarm 
of lamenting ones her whose heart I shall ask in exchange 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


63 


for my own. 

And now I hear you say: Whom will you take then ? 
You will not have young girls, nor married women, nor 
widows. You do not like mammas, and I do not sup- 
pose that you are any fonder of grandmothers. Whom 
the deuce do you like ? It is the answer to the charade, 
and if I knew it, I should not torment myself so much. 
Up to the present, I have never loved any woman, but I 
have loved and do love — love. Although I have had no 
mistresses, and the women that I have had have merely 
kindled desire, I have felt, and I am acquainted with 
love itself. I have not loved this woman or that, one 
more than another, but some one whom I have never 
seen, who must live somewhere, and whom I shall find, 
if it please God. I know well what she is like, and, 
when I meet her, I shall recognize her. 

‘‘I have often pictured to myself the place where she 
dwells, the dress that she wears, the eyes and hair that 
she has. I hear her voice; I should recognize her step 
among a thousand, and if, by chance, some one uttered 
her name, I should turn round; it is impossible that she 
should not have one of the five or six names that I have 
given her in my head. 

“She is twenty-six years old, neither more nor less. 
She is not without experience, and she is not yet satiated. 
It is a charming age of making love as it ought to be, 
without childishness and without libertinism. She is of 
medium height. I like neither a giantess nor a dwarf. 
I wish to be able to carry my goddess by myself from 
one room to another; but it would be disagreeable to have 
to look for her in the latter. When raising herself slightly 
on tiptoe, her mouth should reach my kiss. That is the 
proper height. As to her figure, she is rather pluurp 
than thin. I am something of the Turk in this matter, 


64 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


and I should scarcely like to meet with a corner when I 
expected a circumference; a woman’s skin should be 
well filled, her flesh compact and firm, like the pulp of a 
peach that is nearly ripe; and the mistress I shall have 
is made just so. She is a blonde with dark eyes, white 
like a blonde, with the color of a brunette, and a red and 
sparkling smile. The lower lip rather large, the eyeball 
swimming in a flood of natural moisture, her breast 
round, small, and firm, her hands long and plump, her 
walk undulating like a snake standing on its tail, her hips 
full and yielding, her shoulders broad, the nape of her 
neck covered with down; a style of beauty at once deli- 
cate and compact, graceful and healthy, poetic and real; 
a subject of Giorgione’s wrought by Rubens. 

‘‘Here is her costume; she wears a robe of scarlet or 
black velvet, with slashings of white satin or silver cloth, 
an open bodice, a large ruff a la Medici, a felt hat capric- 
iously drawn up like Helena Systerman’s, and with long 
feathers curled and crisp, a golden chain or a stream of 
diamonds about her neck, and a quantity of large, vari- 
ously enameled rings on all her fingers. 

“ I will not excuse her a ring or a bracelet. Her robe 
must be literally of velvet or brocade; at the very most, 
I might permit her to stoop to satin. I would rather 
rumple a silk skirt than a linen one, and let pearls and 
feathers fall from the hair than natural flowers or a simple 
bow; I know that the rustle of a linen skirt is often at 
least as tempting as that of a silk one, but I prefer the 
silk one. 

“Thus, in my dreams, I have given myself as mis- 
tresses many queens, many empresses, many princesses, 
many sultanas, many celebrated courtesans, but never a 
commoner or a shepherdess; and amid my most vagrant 
desires, I have never taken advantage of any one whom 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


65 


I could not embrace without demeaning myself. I con- 
sider beauty a diamond which should be mounted and 
set in gold. I cannot imagine a beautiful woman with- 
out a carriage, horses, serving-men, and all that belongs 
to an income of four thousand a year; there is a harmony 
between beauty and wealth. One requires the other; a 
pretty foot calls for a pretty shoe, a pretty shoe calls for 
a carpet, and a carriage and all the rest of it. A beauti- 
ful woman, poorly dressed and in a mean house, is, to 
my mind, the most painful sight that one could see, and 
I could not feel love towards such a one. It is only the 
handsome and the rich who can make love without being 
ridiculous or pitiable. At this rate few people would be 
entitled to make love; I myself should be the first to be 
excluded; but such is nevertheless my opinion. 

‘^It will be in the evening, during a beautiful sunset, 
that we shall meet for the first time; the sky will have 
those clear yellow and pale-green orange-colored tints 
that we see in the pictures of the old masters; there will 
be a great avenue of flowering chesnut trees and vener- 
able elms filled with wood-pigeons — fine trees of fresh 
dark green, giving a shade full of mystery and dampness; 
a few statues here and there, some marble vases with 
their snowy whiteness standing out in relief on the ground 
of green, a sheet of water with the familiar swan, and, 
quite in the backgronud, a mansion of brick and stone, 
as in the time of Henri IV, with a peaked slate roof, lofty 
chimneys, weathercocks on the gables, and long narrow 
windows. 

“At one of these windows, the queen of my soul, in 
the dress I have just described, leaning with an air of 
melancholy on the balcony, and behind her a little negro 
holding her fan and her parrot. You see that nothing is 
wanting, and that the whole thing is perfectly absurd. 

Maupin — 4 


66 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPLN 


The fair one drops her glove; I pick it up, kiss it, and 
bring it^o her. We enter into conversation, I display 
all the wit that I do not possess; I say charming things; 
I am answered in the same way, I rejoin, it is a display 
of fireworks, a luminous rain of dazzling words. In short, 
I am adorable — and adored. Supper-time arrives; I am 
invited, and accept the invitation. What a supper, my 
dear friend, and what a cook is my imagination! The 
wine laughs in the chrystal, the brown and white pheas- 
ant smokes in the blazoned dish; the banquet is prolonged 
far into the night, and you may be quite sure that I do 
not end the latter at my own home. Is not this well con- 
ceived? Nothing in the world can be more simple, and 
it is truly very astonishing that it has not come to pass 
ten times rather than once. 

Sometimes it is in a large forrest. The hunt sweeps 
by; the horn sounds^, and the pack giving tongue crosses 
the path with the swiftness of lightning; the fair one, in 
a riding habit, is mounted on a Turkish steed as white 
as milk, and as frisky and mettlesome as possible. Al- 
though she is an excellent horsewoman, he paws the 
ground, caracoles, rears, and she has all the trouble in 
the world to hold him in; he gets the bit between his 
teeth and takes her straight towards a precipice. I fall 
there from the sky for the purpose, check the horse, take 
the fainting princess in my arms, restore her, and bring 
her back to the mansion. What well-born woman would 
refuse her heart to a man who has risked his life for her ? 
Not one; and a gratitude is a cross-road which very 
quickly leads to love. 

“You will, at all events, admit that when I go in for 
romance, it is not by halves that I do so, and that I am 
as foolish as it is possible to be. It is always so, for 
there is nothing in the world more disagreeable than folly 






















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MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


67 


with reason in it. You will almost admit that when I 
write letters they are volumes rather than simple notes. 
In everything, I like what goes beyond ordinary limits. 
That is the reason why I am fond of you. Do not laugh 
too much at all the nonsense I have scribbled to you; I 
am laying my pen aside in order to put it into practice; 
for I ever come back to the same refrain: I want to have 
a mistress. I do not know whether it will be the lady of 
the park or the beauty of the balcony, but I bid you good- 
bye that I may commence my quest. My resolution is 
taken. Should she, whom I seek, be concealed in the 
remotest part of the kingdom of Cathay or Samarcand, 
I shall manage to find her out. I will let you know of 
the success or failure — I hope it will be the success — of 
my enterprise. Pray for me, my dear friend. For my 
own part, I am putting on my finest coat, and am leav- 
ing the house determined not to return without a mistress 
in accordance with my ideas. I have been dreaming 
long enough; to action now. 

P. S . — Send me some news of little D ; what 

has become of him ? No one here knows anything about 
him, and give my compliments to your worthy brother 
and to the whole family.” 


CHAPTER II 


‘^Well! my friend, I have come in again without having 
been to Cathay, Cashmere, or Samarcand ; but it is right 
to say that I have not a mistress any more than before. 
Yet I had taken myself by the hand and sworn my 
greatest oath that I would go the end of the world — and 
I have not even been to the end of the town. I do not 
know how it is, but I have never been able to keep my 
word to any one, even to myself ; the devil must have a 
hand in it. If I say, ^I shall go there to-morrow,’ I am 
sure to remain where I am ; if I purpose going to the 
wine shop, I go to church ; if I wish to go to church, the 
roads become as confused beneath my feet as skeins of 
thread, and I find myself in quite a different place ; I 
fast when I have determined on an orgie, and so on. 
Thus I believe that my resolve to have a mistress is what 
prevents me from having one. 

I must give you a detailed account of my expedition; 
it is quite worthy of the honors of narration. That day 
I had spent two full hours at least at my toilet. I had 
my hair combed and curled, the small amount of mous- 
tache that I possess turned up and waxed, and with my 
usually pale face animated somewhat by the emotion of 
desire, I was really not so bad. At last, after looking 
at myself carefully in the glass in different lights to see 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


69 


whether I had a sufficiently handsome and gallant ap- 
pearance, I went resolutely out of the house, with lofty 
countenance, chin in air, and one hand on my hip, look- 
ing straight before me, making the heels of my boots 
rattle like an anspessade, elbowing the townsfolk, and 
with quite a victorious and triumphal mien. 

I was like another Jason going to the conquest of 
the Golden Fleece. But alas! Jason was more fortu- 
nate than I ; besides the conquest of the fleece he at the 
same time effected the conquest of a beautiful princess, 
while, as for me, I have neither princess nor fleece. 

‘‘I went away, then, through the streets, noticing all 
the women, and hastening up to them and looking at 
them as closely as possible when they seemed worth the 
trouble of an examinarion.. Some would assume their 
most virtuous air, and pass without raising their eyes. 
Others would at first be surprised, and then, if they had 
good teeth, would smile. Others again would turn after 
a little to see me when they thought I was no longer 
looking at them, and blush like cherries when they found 
themselves face to face with me. 

^^The weather was fine, and there was a crowd of 
people out walking. And yet, I must confess, in spite 
of all the respect I entertain towards that interesting half 
of the human race, that which it is agreed to call the fair 
sex is devilish ugly; in a hundred women there was 
scarcely one that was passable. This one had a mous- 
tache; that one had a blue nose; others had red spots 
instead of eyebrows. One was not badly made, but her 
face was covered with pimples. A second had a charm- 
ing head, but she might have scratched her ear with her 
shoulder. A third would have shamed Praxiteles with 
the roundness and softness of certain curves, but she 
skated on feet that were like Turkish stirrups. Yet 


70 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


another displayed the most magnificent shouldeiw ^Uat 
one could see; but as a set off, her hands resembled for 
shape and size those enormous scarlet gloves which hab- 
erdashers use as signs. And generally, what fatigue 
was there on these faces ! how blighted, etiolated, and 
basely worn by petty passions and petty vices ! What 
expressions of envy, evil curiosity, greediness and shame- 
less coquetry ! And how much more ugly is a woman 
who is not handsome than a man who is not so ! 

“ I saw nothing good — except some grisettes. But 
there is more linen than silk to rumple in that quarter, 
and they are no affair of^ mine. In truth, I believe that 
man, and by man I also understand woman, is the ugli- 
est animal on earth. This quadruped who walks on his 
hind legs seems to me singularly presumptuous in assign- 
ing quite as a matter of right the first rank in creation to 
himself. A lion, or a tiger, is handsomer than man, and 
many individuals in their species attain to all the beauty 
that belongs to their nature. This is extremely rare 
among men. What abortions for an Antinous ! what 
Gothones for a Phyllis ! 

I am greatly afraid, my dear friend, that I shall never 
embrace my ideal, and yet there is nothing extravagant 
or unnatural in it. It is not the ideal of a third-form 
schoolboy. I do not require globes of ivory, nor columns 
of alabaster, nor traceries of azure ; and in its composi- 
tion I have employed neither lilies, nor snow, nor roses, 
nor jet, nor ebony, nor coral, nor ambrosia, nor pearls, 
nor diamonds ; I have left the stars of heaven in peace, 
and I have not unhooked the sun out of season. It is 
almost a vulgar ideal, so simple is it ; and it seems to me 
that with a bag or two of piastres I might find it ready 
made and completely realized in no matter which bazaar 
of Constantinople or Smyrna; it would probably cost me 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


71 


less than a horse or a thoroughbred dog. And to think 
that I shall never attain to this — for I feel that I shall 
never do so! It is enough to madden one, and I fall into 
the finest passions in the world against my fate. 

As for you — you are not so foolish as I am, and you 
are fortunate; you have simply given yourself up to your 
life without tormenting yourself to shape it, and you 
have taken things as they came. You have not sought 
happiness, and it has sought you; you are loved, and you 
love. I do not envy you — you must not think that, at 
least — but when I reflect on your bliss, I feel less joyous 
than I ought to be; and I say to myself with a sigh that 
I would gladly enjoy similar felicity. 

Perhaps my happiness has passed close to me, and 
in my blindness I have not seen it. Perhaps the voice 
has spoken, and the noise of the storms within me has 
prevented me from hearing. 

Perhaps I have been loved in obscurity by some 
humble heart that I have disregarded and broken. Per- 
haps I have myself been the ideal of another, the lode- 
star of some soul in suspense, the dream of a night and 
the thought of a day. Had I looked to my feet, I* might 
perhaps have seen some fair Magdalene with the box of 
odors and her sweeping hair. I passed along with my 
arms raised towards the heavens, desiring to pluck the 
stars which fled from me, and disdaining to pick up the 
little Easter daisy that was opening her golden heart to 
me in the dewy grass. I have made a great mistake; I 
have asked from love something more than love, and 
that it could not give. I forgot that love was naked ; I 
did not understand the meaning of this grand symbol. I 
have asked from it robes of brocade, feathers, diamonds, 
sublimity of soul, knowledge, poetry, beauty, youth, su- 
preme power — everything that is not itself. Love can 


72 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


offer itself alone, and he who would obtain from it aught 
else is not worthy to be loved. 

‘‘I have without doubt hastened too much; my 
hour has not come ; God, who has lent me life, will 
not take it back from me before I have lived. To 
what end give a lyre without strings to a poet, or a life 
without love to a man ? God could not do such an in- 
consistent thing ; and no doubt He will, at His chosen 
time, place in my path her whom I am to Jove, and by 
whom I am to be loved. But why has Jove come to 
me before the mistress ? Why am I thirsty, yet without 
the spring at which to quench my thirst ? or why can I 
not fly like the birds of the desert to the spot where 
there is water ? The world is to me a Sahara without 
wells or date-trees. I have not a single shady nook in 
my life where I can screen myself from the sun; I en- 
dure all the fervor of passion without its raptures and 
unspeakable delights ; I know its torments, and am with- 
out its pleasures. I am jealous of what does not exist; 
I am disquieted by the shadow of a shadow ; I heave 
sighs which have no motive ; I suffer sleeplessness which 
no worshipped phantom comes to adorn ; I shed tears 
which flow to the ground without being dried; I give to 
the winds kisses which are not returned ; I wear out my 
eyes trying to grasp in the distance an uncertain and de- 
ceitful form ; I wait for what is not to come, and I 
count the hours anxiously, as though I had an appoint- 
ment to keep. 

“Whoever thou art, angel or demon, maid or courte- 
san, shepherdess or princess, whether thou comest from 
the north or from the south, thou whom I know not, and 
whom I love ! oh ! force me not to wait longer for thee, 
or the flame will consume the altar, and thou wilt find in 
the place of my heart but a heap of cold ashes. Descend 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


73 


from the sphere where thou art ; leave the crystal skies, 
consoling spirit, and come thou to cast the shadow of 
thy mighty wings upon my soul. Come thou, woman 
whom I will love, that I may close about thee the arms 
that have been open for so long. Let the golden doors 
of the palace wherein she dwells turn on their hinges; let 
the humble latch of her cottage rise ; let the branches in 
the woods and the briars of the wayside untwine them- 
selves ; let the enchantments of the turret and the spells 
of the magicians be broken ; let the ranks of the crowd 
be opened up to suffer her to pass though. 

If thou comest too late, O my ideal ! I shall not have 
the power left to love thee. My soul is like a dovecote 
full of doves. At every hour of the day there flies forth 
some desire. The doves return to the cote, but desires 
return not to the heart. The azure of the sky becomes 
white with their countless swarms; they pass away, 
through space, from world to world, from clime to clime, 
in quest of some love where they may perch and pass the 
night : hasten thy step, O my dream ! or thou wilt find 
in the empty nest but the shells of the birds that have 
flown away. 

^‘My friend, companion of my childhood, to you alone 
could I relate such things as these. Write to me that 
you pity me, and that you do not reckon me a hypo- 
chondriac ; afford me comfort, for never did I need it 
more ; how enviable are those who have a passion which 
they can satisfy ! The drunkard never encounters cru- 
elty in his bottle. He falls from the tavern into the ken- 
nel, and is more happy on his heap of a filth than a king 
upon his throne. The sensualist goes to courtesans for 
facile amours or shameless refinements. A painted cheek, 
a short petticoat, alow-cut gown, a licentious speech, and 
he is happy; his eye grows white, his lip is wet ; he at- 


74 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUL IN 


tains the last degree of his happiness, he feels the rap- 
ture of his coarse voluptuousness. The gamester has need 
but of a green cloth and a pack of greasy and worn-out 
cards to obtain the keen pangs, nervous spasms and dia- 
bolical enjoyments of his horrible passion. Such people 
as these may be sated or amused; but that is impossible 
for me. 

‘‘This idea has so taken possession of me that I no 
longer love the arts, and poetry has no longer any charm 
for me. What formerly transported me, makes not the 
least impression on me. 

“I begin to believe that I am in the wrong, and I am 
asking more from nature and society than they can give. 
What I seek has no existence, and I ought not to com- 
plain for having failed to find it. Yet if the woman of 
our dreams is impossible to the conditions of human na- 
ture, what is it that causes us to love her only and none 
other, since we are men, and our instinct should be an 
infallible guide ? Who has given us the idea of this im- 
aginary woman ? From what clay have we formed this 
invisible statue ? Whence took we the feathers that we 
have placed on the back of this chimera ? What mystic 
bird placed unnoted in some dark corner of our soul the 
egg from which there has come forth our dream ? What 
is the abstract beauty which we feel but cannot define ? 
Why, in the presence of some woman who is often charm- 
ing, do we sometimes say that she is beautiful, while we 
think her very ugly ? 

“Where is the model, the type, the inward pattern 
which affords us the standard of comparison ? — for beauty 
is not an absolute idea, and it can be estimated only by 
contrast. Have we seen it in the skies, in a star, at 
a ball, under a mother’s shadow, the fresh bud of a leaf- 
less rose ? Was it in Italy or in Spain ? Was it here or 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


75 


was it there, yesterday or a long time ago ? Was it the 
worshipped courtesan, the fashionable singer, the prince’s 
daughter ? A proud and noble head bending beneath a 
weighty diadem of pearls and rubies ? A young and 
childish face stooping among the nasturtiums and bind- 
weeds at the window? To what school belonged that 
picture in which this beauty stood out white and radiant 
amid the dark shadows ? Was it Raphael who caressed 
the outline that pleases you? Was it Cleomenes who 
polished the marble that you adore ? Are you in love 
with a Madonna or a Diana ? Is your ideal an angel, a 
sylphid, or a woman ? 

‘^Alas! it is something of all this, and yet it is not 
this. 

^^Such transparency of tone, such freshness so charm- 
ing and full of splendor, such flesh wherein runs so much 
blood and life, such beautiful flaxen hair spreading itself 
like a mantle of gold, such sparkling smiles and such 
beautiful dimples, such shapes undulating like flames, 
such force and such suppleness, such satin gloss and 
such rich lines, such plump arms and such fleshy and 
polished backs — all this exquisite health belongs to Ru- 
bens. Raphael alone could fill lineaments so chaste with 
that pale amber color. What others, save he, curved 
those long eye-brows so delicate and so black, and spread 
the fringes of those eye-lashes so modestly cast down ? 
Do you think that Allegri goes for nothing in your ideal ? 
It is from him that the lady of your thoughts has stolen 
the dull, warm and whiteness that enraptures you. She 
has stood for long before his canvases to surprise the se- 
cret of that angelic and ever full-blown smile; she has 
modeled the oval of her face on the oval of a nymph or 
a saint. That line of the hip which winds so voluptu- 
ously belongs to the sleeping Antelope. Those fat, deli- 


76 MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 

cate hands might be claimed by Danae or Magdalene. 

‘‘Dusty antiquity itself has provided many of the ma- 
terials for the composition of your young chimera. Those 
strong and supple loins around which twine your arms 
with so much passion were sculptured by Praxiteles. 
That divinity has purposely suffered the tip of her 
charming little foot to pass through the ashes of Hercu- 
laneum that your idol may not be lame. Nature has 
also contributed her share. Here and there in the 
prism of desire you have seen a beautiful eye be- 
neath a window-blind, an ivory brow pressed against a 
pane, a smiling mouth behind a fan. From a hand you 
have divined the arm, and from an ankle, the knee. What 
you saw was perfect; you supposed the rest to be like 
what you saw, and you completed it with portions of 
other beauties obtained elsewhere. 

“Even the ideal beauty realized by the painters did 
not satisfy you, and you have sought from the poets 
more rounded curves, more etherial forms, more divine 
charms, and more exquisite refinements. You have be- 
sought them to give breath and speech to your phantom, 
all their love, all their musing, all their joy and sadness, 
their melancholy and all their hopes, their knowledge 
and their passions, their spirit and their heart. All this 
you have taken from them, and to crown the impossible 
you have added your own passion, your own spirit, your 
own dream, and your own thought. The star has lent 
its ray, the flower its fragrance, the palette its color, the 
poet his harmony, the marble its form, and you your 
desire. 

“How could a real woman, eating and drinking, get- 
ting up in the morning and going to bed at night, how- 
ever adorable and full of charm she might otherwise be, 
compare with a creature such as this? It could not 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


77 


reasonably be expected, and yet it is expected and 
sought. What strange blindness ! It is sublime or 
absurd. How I pity and how I admire those who pur- 
sue their dream in the teeth of all reality, and die con- 
tent if they but once kissed the lips of their chimera ! 
But what a fearful fate is that of a Columbus who has 
failed to discover his world, and of a lover who has not 
found his mistress ! 

^‘Ah ! if I were a poet my songs should be consecrated 
to those whose lives have been failures ; whose arrows 
have missed the mark, who have died without speaking 
the word they had to utter and without pressing the 
hand that was destined for them ; to all that has proved 
abortive and to all that has passed unnoticed, to the 
stifled fire, to the barren genius, to the unknown pearl 
in the depths of the sea, to all that has loved without 
return, and to all that has suffered with pity from none. 
It would be a noble task. 

Plato was right in wishing to banish you from his 
republic, O ye poets ! for what evil have you wrought 
upon us ! How yet more bitter has our wormwood been 
rendered by your ambrosia ! and how yet more arid and 
desolate seems our life to us after feasting our eyes on 
the vistas which you open up to us of the infinite ! How 
terrible a conflict have your dreams waged against our 
realities; and how have our hearts been trodden and 
trampled on by these rude athletes during the contest ! 

‘^We have sat down like Adam at the foot of the walls 
of the terrestrial paradise, on the steps of the staircase 
leading to the sun’s flashing through the chinks of the 
door, and hearing indistinctly some scattered notes of a 
seraphic harmony. Whenever one of the elect enters or 
comes forth amid a flood of splendor, we stretch our 
necks trying to see something through the half open por- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


78 

tal. The fairy architecture has not its equal save in 
Arab tales. Piles of columns with arches superposed, 
pillars twisted in spirals, foliage marvelously carved, 
hollowed tresoils, porphyry, jaspar, lapis-lazuli — but 
what know I of the transparencies and dazzling reflec- 
tions, of the profusion of strange gems, sardonyx, chry- 
soberyl, aqua marina, rain-bow tinted opals, and azerod- 
rach, with jets of crystals, torches that would make the 
stars grow pale, a lustrous vapor, giddy and filled with 
sound — a luxury perfectly Assyrian ! 

‘‘The door swings to again, and you see no more. 
Your eyes, filled with corrosive tears, are cast down on 
this poor earth so impoverished and wan, on these ruined 
hovels and on this tattered race, on your soul, an arid 
rock where nothing living springs, on all the wretched- 
ness and misfortune of reality. Ah ! if only we could 
fly so far, if the steps of that fiery staircase did not burn 
our feet; but, alas ! Jacob’s ladder can be ascended only 
by angels ! 

“What a fate is that of the poor man at the gate of 
the rich ! What keen irony is that of a palace facing a 
cottage — the ideal facing the. real, poetry facing prose ! 
What rooted hate must wring the heart-strings of the 
wretched beings ! What gnashings of teeth must sound 
through the night from their pallet, as the wind brings to 
their ears the sights of theorbos and viols of love]! Poets, 
painters, sculptors, musicians, why have you lied to us ? 
Poets, why have you told us your dreams? Painters, 
why have you fixed upon the canvas that impalpable 
phantom which ascended and descended with your fits 
of passion between your heart and your head, saying to 
us: ‘ This is a woman ? ’ Sculptors, why have you taken 
marble from the depths of Carrara to make it express 
for ever, and 'to the eyes of all, your most secret and 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


79 


fleeting desire ? Musicians, why have you listened 
during the night to the song of the stars and the flowers, 
and noted it down ? Why have you made songs so beau- 
tiful that the sweetest voice saying to us, M love you,’ 
seems hoarse as the grinding of a saw or the croaking of 
a crow ? Curse you for impostors ! And may fire from 
heaven burn up and destroy all pictures, poems, statues, 
and musical scores. But this is a tirade of intermin- 
able length, and deviates somewhat from the epistolary 
style. What a dose ! 

‘‘I have given myself up nicely to lyrics, my dear 
friend, and I have now been writing bombast for some 
time absurdly enough. All this is very remote from our 
subject, which is, if I remember rightly, the glorious and 
triumphant history of the Chevalier d’Albert in his pur- 
suit of the most beautiful princess in the world, as the 
old romances say. But in truth the history is so meagre 
that I am obliged to have recourse to digressions and re- 
flections. I hope that it will not be always so, and that 
the romance of my life will before long be more tangled 
and complicated than a Spanish imbroglio. 

After wandering from street to street, I determined 
to go to one of my friends who was to introduce me to a 
house where, I was told, a world of pretty women were 
to be seen — a collection of real ideals, enough to satisfy 
a score of poets. There were some to suit every taste — 
aristocratic beauties with eagle looks, sea-green eyes, 
straight noses, proudly elevated chins, royal hands, and 
the walk of a goddess; silver lilies mounted on stalks of 
gold; simple violets of pale color and sweet perfume, 
with moist and downcast eye, frail neck, and diaphanous 
flesh; lively and piquant beauties, affected beauties, and 
beauties of all sorts; for the house is a very seraglio, 
minus the eunuchs and the kislar aga. 


8o 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


My friend tells me that he has already had five or six 
flames here — quite as many. This seems to me prodig- 
ious in the extreme, and I greatly fear that I shall not be 

equally successful; De C pretends that I shall, and 

that I shall succeed beyond my wishes. According to 
him, I have only one fault, which will be cured by time 
and by mixing into society; it is that I esteem woman too 
much and women not enough. It is quite possible that 
there may be some truth in this. He says that I shall 
be quite lovable when I have* got rid of this little oddity. 
God grant it ! Women must feel that I despise them, 
for a compliment which they would think adorable and 
charming to the last degree in the mouth of another, 
angers and displeases them as much as the most cutting 
epigram when it proceeds from mine. This has probably 
some connection with what De C objects to in me. 

‘‘ My heart beat a little as I ascended a staircase, and 

I had scarcely recovered from my emotion when De C , 

nudging me with his elbow, brought me face to face with 
a woman of about thirty years of age, rather handsome, 
attired with heavy luxury and an extreme affectation of 
childish simplicity, which, however, did not prevent her 
from being’ plastered with red paint like a coach wheel. 
It was the lady of the house. 

^‘De C , assuming that shrill mocking voice so 

different from his customary tones, and which he makes 
use of in society when he wishes to play the charmer, 
said to her, with many tokens of ironic respect, through 
which was visible the most profound contempt: 

^‘^This is the young fellow I spoke to you about the 
other day — a man of the most distinguished merit. He 
belongs to one of the best families, and I think that it 
cannot but be agreeable to you to receive him. I have 
therefore taken the liberty to introduce him to you. ’ 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 


8i 


‘You have certainly done quite right, sir,’ replied the 
lady, mincing in the most exaggerated fashion. Then 
she turned to me, and, after looking me over with the 
corner of her eye after the manner of a skilled connois- 
seur, and in a way that made me blush to the tips of my 
ears, said, ‘You may consider yourself as invited once for 
all, and come as often as you have an evening to throw 
away. ’ 

“ I bowed awkwardly enough, and stammered out some 
unconnected words, which could not have given her a 
lofty opinion of my talents. The entrance of some other 
people released me from the irksomeness inseparable from 

an introduction, and De C , drawing me into a corner 

of the window, began to lecture me soundly. 

“ ‘ The deuce! You are going to compromise me. I 
announced you as a phoenix of wit, a man of unbridled 
imagination, a lyric poet, everything that is most trans- 
cendent and impassioned, and there you stand like a 
blockhead without uttering a word! What a miserable 
imagination! I thought your humor more fertile than 
that. But come, give your tongue the rein, and chatter 
right and left. You need not say sensible and judicious 
things; on the contrary, that might do you harm. Speak 
— that is the essential thing — speak much and long. 
Draw attention to yourself; cast aside all fear and mod- 
esty. Get it well into your head that all here are fools 
or nearly so; and do not forget that an orator who would 
succeed cannot despise his hearers enough. What do 
you think of the mistress of the house? 

“ ‘She displeases me considerably already; and, 
though I spoke to her for scarcely three minutes, I 
felt as bored as if I had been her husband.’ 

“ ‘Ah! is that what you think of her?’ 

“ ‘Why, yes.’ 

Maupin— 5 


82 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


‘‘ ‘Your dislike to her is then quite insurmountable? 
Well, so much the worse. It would have been only 
decent to have had her if but for a month. It is the pro- 
per thing to do, and a respectable young fellow cannot 
be introduced into society except through her.’ 

“ ‘Well! I will have her,’ I replied with a rather 
piteous air, ‘ since it is necessary. But is it so essential 
as you seem to think! ’ 

“ ‘Alas! yes, it is most indispensable, and I am going 
to explain the reasons to you. Madame de Thimines is 
at present in vogue; she has all the absurdities of the 
day after a superior fashion, sometimes those of to-mor- 
row, but never those of yesterday. She is quite in the 
swim. People wear what she wears, and she never wears 
what has been worn already. Furthermore she is rich, 
and her equipages are in the best taste. She has no wit, 
but much jargon; she has keen likings and little passion. 
People please her, but do not move her. She has a cold 
heart and a licentious head. As to her soul — if she has 
one, which is doubtful — it is of the blackest, and there is 
no wickedness or baseness of which it is incapable; but 
she is very dexterous, and she keeps up appearances 
just so far as is necessary to prevent anything being 
proved against her. Thus she will get drunk with a man 
without ado, and will not write him the simplest note. 
Accordingly her most intimate enemies can find nothing 
to say about her except that she rouges too highly, and 
that certain portions of her person have not in truth all 
the roundness that they seem to possess — which is false.’ 

“ ‘ How do you know? ’ 

“ ‘ What a question! in the only way one knows things 
of the kind, by finding out for myself.’ 

“ ‘Then you have also had Madame de Thimines? 

“ ‘Certainly! Why not? It would have been most 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 83 

unbecoming if I had not had her. She has been of great 
service to me and I am grateful for it. 

‘‘ ‘ I do not understand the nature of the services she 
can have rendered you. ’ 

‘Are you really a fool then?’ said De C , looking 

at me with the most comical air in the world. Upon my 
word, I am afraid so! Must I tell you the whole story? 
Madame de Thimines is reputed, and deservedly so, to 
have special knowledge on certain subjects, and a young 
man that she has taken up and kept for a while may pre- 
sent himself boldly everywhere, and be sure that he will 
not remain for long without having an affair on hand, 
and two rather than one. Besides this unspeakable ad- 
vantage, there is another no less important, which is, that 
as soon as the women of the world here see that you are 
the recognized lover of Madame de Th6mines, they will 
make it a pleasure and a duty, even if they have not the 
least liking for you, to carry you off from a woman who 
is the fashion as she is. Instead of the advances and 
proceedings that would have been necessary, you will 
not know where to choose, and you will of necessity be- 
come the object of all the allurements and affectations 
imaginable. 

“ ‘Nevertheless, if she inspires you with too great a 
repugnance, do not take her. You are not exactly obliged 
to do so, though it would have been polite and proper. 
But make a choice quickly, and attack her who pleases 
you most, or who seems to afford you most facilities, for 
delay would lose you the benefit of novelty, and the ad- 
vantage it gives you for a few days over all the cavaliers 
here. All these ladies have no conception of those pas- 
sions which have their birth in intimacy, and develop 
slowly with respect and silence. They are for thunder- 
bolts and occult sympathies — something marvelously 


84 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


well imagined to save the tedium of resistance, and all 
the prolixity and repetition which sentiment mingles with 
the romance of love, and which only serve to delay the 
conclusion uselessly. These ladies are very economical 
of their time, and it appears so precious to them that 
they would be grieved to leave a single minute unem- 
ployed. They have a desire to oblige mankind, which 
cannot be too highly praised, and they love their neigh- 
bor as themselves, which is quite according to the Gos- 
pel, and very meritorious. They are very charitable 
creatures, who would not for anything in the world cause 
a man to die of despair. 

^ There must be three or four already smitten in your 
favor, and I would advise you in a friendly way to pur- 
sue your point with spirit over these instead of amusing 
yourself gossiping with me in the embrasure of a win- 
dow, which will not advance you any great extent. ’ 

‘ But my dear De C , I am quite new to this kind 

of thing. I am utterly without the power to distinguish 
at first sight a woman who is smitten from one who is 
not; and I might make strange blunders if you did not 
assist me with your experience.’ 

“ ^You are really as primitive as you can be. I did 
not think that it was possible to be as pastoral and bu- 
colic as that in the present blessed century ! What the 
devil do you do, then, with the large pair of black eyes 
that you have there, and that would have the most crush- 
ing effect if you knew how to make use of them ? ’ 

“ ‘ Just look yonder a moment at that little woman in 
rose, playing with her fan in the corner near the fire- 
place. She has been eyeing you for a quarter of an 
hour with the most significant fixity and assiduity. There 
is not another in the world who can be indecent after 
such a superior fashion, and display such noble shame,- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


85 


lessness. She is greatly disliked by the women who de- 
spair of ever attaining to such a height of impudence, 
but to compensate for this, she is greatly liked by the 
men, who find in her all the piquancy of a courtesan. 
She is in truth charmingly depraved, and full of wit, 
spirit, and caprice. She is an excellent mistress for a 
young man with prejudices. In a week she will rid your 
conscience of all scruples, and corrupt your heart in such 
a way that you will never be a subject for ridicule or 
elegy. She has inexpressibly practical ideas about every- 
thing; she goes to the bottom of things with a swiftness 
and certainty that are astonishing. She is algebra incar- 
nate, is that little woman. She is precisely what is needed 
by a dreamer and an enthusiast. She will soon cure you 
of your vaporish idealism, and she will do you a great 
service. She will moreover do it with the greatest pleas- 
ure, for it is an instinct with her to disenchant poets.’ 

‘^My curiosity being aroused by De C ’s descrip- 

tion, I left my retreat, and gliding through the various 
groups, approached the lady, and looked at her with 
much attention. She was perhaps twenty-five or twenty- 
six years of age. Her figure was small, but well made, 
though somewhat inclined to embonpoint. Her arm was 
white and plump, her hand noble, her foot pretty and 
even too delicate, her shoulders full and glossy, and her 
breast small, but what there was of it very satisfactory, 
and giving a favorable idea of the remainder. As to her 
hair, it was splendid in the extreme, of a blue black, like 
that of a jackdaw’s wing. The corner of her eyes was 
turned up rather high towards the temple, her nose slen- 
der with very open nostrils, her mouth humid and sen- 
sual, a little furrow in the lower lip, and an almost im- 
perceptible down where the upper was united to it. And 
with all this there was such life, animation, health, force, 


86 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


and such an indefinable expression of love skilfully tem- 
pered with coquetry and intrigue, that she was in short a 
very desirable creature, and more than justified the eager 
likings which she had inspired and still inspired every 
day. 

I wished for her; but I nevertheless understood that, 
agreeable as she was, she was not the woman who would 
realize my desire, and make me say, ^At last I have a 
mistress!’ 

I returned to De C and said to him: I like the lady 

well enough, and I shall perhaps make arrangements with 
her. But before saying anything definite and binding, 
I should be very glad if you would be kind enough to point 
me out these indulgent beauties who had the goodness to be 
smitten with me, so that I may make a choice. It would 
please me too, seeing that you are acting as demonstra- 
tor to me here, if you would add a little account of them 
with the nomenclature of their qualities and their defects, 
the manner in which they should be attacked, and the 
tone to adopt with them in order that I may not look too 
much like a provincial or an author. ’ 

“ ^ Willingly,’ said De C . ^ Do you see that beau- 

tiful, melancholy swan, displaying her neck so harmon- 
iously, and moving her sleeves as though they were 
wings ? She is modesty itself — everything that is chast- 
est and most maidenly in the world. She has a brow of 
snow, a heart of ice, the looks of a Madonna, the smile 
of a simpleton, her dress is white, and her soul is the 
same. She puts nothing but orange-blossoms or leaves 
of the water-lily in her hair, and she is connected with 
the earth only by a thread. She has never had an evil 
thought, and she is profoundly ignorant of how a man 
differs from a woman. The Holy Virgin is a Bacchante 
beside her, which, however, does not prevent her from 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


87 


having had more lovers than any other woman of my ac- 
quaintance, and that is saying a good deal. Just examine 
this discreet person’s breast for a moment; it is a little 
masterpiece, and it is really difficult to show so much 
while hiding more. Say, is she not, with all her restric- 
tions and all her prudery, ten times more indecent than 
that good lady on her left, who is making a grand show 
of two hemispheres, which, if they were joined together, 
would make a map of the world of natural size, or than 
the other on her right, whose dress is open almost to her 
stomach, and who is parading her nothingness with charm- 
ing intrepidity ? 

‘^^This maidenly creature, if I am not greatly mis- 
taken, has already computed in her head the amount of 
love and passion promised by your paleness and black 
eyes, and what makes me say so is the fact that she has 
not once, apparently, at least, looked towards you; for 
she can move her eyes with so much art, and look out of 
the corner of them so skilfully, that nothing escapes her; 
one would think that she could see out of the back of 
her head, for she knows perfectly well what is going on 
behind her. She is a female Janus. If you would suc- 
ceed with her you must lay swaggering and victorious 
manners aside. You must speak to her without looking 
at her, without making any movement, in an attitude of 
contrition, and in suppressed and respectful tones. In 
this way you may say to her what you will, provided it 
be suitably veiled, and she will allow you the greatest 
freedom at first of speech, and afterwards of action. 
Only be careful to look at her with tenderness when her 
own eyes are cast down, and speak to her of the sweets 
of platonic love and of the intercourse of the soul, while 
employing the least platonic and ideal pantomime in the 
world ! She is very lovable and very susceptible; em- 


88 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UP IN 


brace her as much as you like; but when most freely in- 
timate with her, do not forget to call her tnadame two or 
three times in every sentence. 

‘‘ ‘ I have no great desire to hazard the adventure, after 
what you have told me. A prudish Messalina! the union 
is monstrous and strange.’ 

‘‘ ‘ It is as old as the world, my dear fellow! It is to be 
seen every day, and nothing is more common. You are 
wrong not to have fixed upon her. She has one great 
charm, which is, that with her a man always seems to be 
committing mortal sin, and the least kiss appears perfect- 
ly damnable, while in the case of others he scarcely thinks 
the sin a venial one, and often even thinks nothing of it 
at all. That is why I kept her longer than any other 
mistress. I should have had her still if she had not left 
me herself. She is the only woman who has anticipated 
me, and I have a certain respect for her on that account. 
She has little voluptuous refinements of the most exquis- 
ite delicacy, and she possesses the great art of making it 
appear that she has wrested from her what she grants 
very willingly. You will find in the world ten of her 
lovers who will swear to you on their honor that she is 
the most virtuous creature in existence. She is just the 
contrary. It is a curious study to anatomize virtue of 
that kind on a pillow. Being forewarned you will not run 
any risk, and you will not have the awkwardness to fall 
really in love with her. ’ t 

‘‘ ^ And how old is the adorable person?’ I asked, for, 
examining her with the most scrupulous attention, I 
found it impossible to determine her age. 

‘ Ah! how old is she? That is just the mystery, and 
God alone knows. I who pique myself on telling a 
woman’s age to within a minute have never been able to 
find out. I merely estimate approximately that she is 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


89 


perhaps from eighteen to thirty-six years of age. I have 
seen her in full dress, in dishabille, and I can tell you 
nothing with respect to this. My knowledge is a fault; 
the age which she seems particularly to be is. eighteen, 
yet that cannot be the case. She has the body of a 
maiden and the soul of a gay woman, and to become so 
deeply and so speciously depraved, much time or genius 
is necessary; it is needful to have a heart of bronze in a 
breast of steel: she has neither one nor the other, and I 
therefore think that she is thirty-six; but practically I do 
not know.’ 

‘Has she no intimate friend who would give you in- 
formation on this point? ’ 

“ ‘ No. She arrived in this town two years ago. She 
came from the country, or from abroad, I forgot which — 
an admirable situation for a woman who knows how to 
turn it to account. With such a face as hers she might 
give herself any age she liked, and date only from the 
day that she arrived here.’ 

“ ‘Nothing should be more pleasant, especially when 
some impertinent wrinkle does not come to give you the 
lie, and time, the Great Destroyer, has the goodness to 
lend himself to this falsification of the certificate of bap- 
tism.’ 

“ He showed me some others who, according to him, 
would favorably receive all the petitions that it might 
please me to address to them, and would treat me with 
most particular philanthropy. But the woman in rose 
at the corner of the fire-plaec, and the modest dove who 
served as her antithesis, were incomparably better than 
all the rest; and if they had not all the qualities which I 
require, they had, in appearance at least, some of them. 

“ I conversed the whole evening with them, especially 
with the latter, and was careful to cast my ideas in the 


go 


MABEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


most respectful mould. Although she scarcely looked at 
me, I thought that I saw her eyes gleam sometimes be- 
neath their curtain of eyelashes, and, when I ventured 
some rather lively gallantries, clothed, however, in most 
modest guise, a little blush, checked and suppressed, 
pass two or three lines below her skin, similar to that 
produced by a rose-colored liquid when poured into a 
semi-opaque cup. Her replies were, in general, sober 
and circumspect, yet acute and full of point, and they 
suggested more than they expressed. All this was inter- 
mingled with omissions, hints, indirect allusions, each 
syllable having its purpose, and each silence its import. 
Nothing in the world could have been more diplomatic 
and more charming. And yet, whatever pleasure I may 
have taken in it for the moment, I could not keep up a 
conversation of the kind for long. One must be perpet- 
ually on the alert and on one’s guard, and what I like 
best of all in a chat is freedom and familiarity. 

We spoke at first of music, which led us quite nat- 
urally^^to speak of the Opera, next of women, and then 
of lo^e, a subject in which it is easier than in any other 
to find means of passing from the general to the particu- 
lar. We vied with each other in making love; you would 
have laughed to listen to me. In truth, Amadis on the 
poor Roche was but a pedant without fire beside me. 
There was generosity, and an abnegation, and devotion 
enough to cause the deceased Roman, Curtius, to blush 
for shame. I really did not think myself capable of such 
transcendent balderdash and bombast. 

‘ I playing at the most quintessential Platonism — does 
it not strike you as a most facetious thing, as the best 
comedy scene that could be presented ? And then, good 
heavens ! the perfectly devout air, the little, demure, and 
hypocritical ways that I have displayed ! On that even- 







MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


91 


ing I appeared more virtuous, and was less so than ever 
in my life before. I thought that it was more difficult 
than that to play the hypocrite, and to say things without 
in the least believing them. It must be easy enough, or 
I must be very apt to have succeeded so agreeably the 
first time. In truth, I have some fine moments. 

“As to the lady, she said many things that were most 
ingeniously detailed, and which, in spite of the appear- 
ance of frankness which she threw into them, denoted the 
most consummate experience. You can form no idea of 
the subtlety of her distinctions. That woman would 
saw a hair into three parts lengthways, and would dis- 
concert all the angelic and seraphic doctors. For the 
rest, she speaks in such a manner that it is impossible to 
believe that she has even the shadow of a body. She is 
immaterial, vaporous, and ideal enough to make you 

break your arms, and if De C had not warned me 

about the ways of the animal, I should assuredly have 
despaired of success, and have stood piteously aside. 

“In short, we separated on very friendly terms, with 
reciprocal congratulations on the loftiness and purity of 
our sentiments. 

“ The conversation with the other one was, as you 
may imagine, of quite an opposite description. We 
laughed as much as we spoke. We made fun very wit- 
tily of all the women who were there; but I am mistaken 
when I say, ‘We made fun of them very wittily.’ I 
should have said that ‘ she ’ did so, for a man can never 
laugh effectively at a woman. For my part, I listened 
and approved, for it would have been impossible to draw 
a more lively sketch, or to color it more highly. It was 
the most curious gallery of caricatures that I have ever 
seen. In spite of the exaggeration, one could see the 
truth underlying it. De C was quite right; the 


92 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


mission of this woman is to disenchant poets. She has 
about her an atmosphere of prose in which a poetical 
thought cannot live. 

‘^She is charming and sparkling with wit, yet beside 
her one thinks only of base and vulgar things. While 
speaking to her I felt a crowd of desires incongruous and 
impracticable in the place where I was, such as to call 
for wine and get drunk, to place her on one of my knees 
and kiss her throat, to raise the hem of her skirt and see 
whether her garter was above or below the knee, to sing 
a ribald refrain with all my might, to smoke a pipe, or to 
break the widows — in short, to do anything. All the 
animal part, all the brute, rose within me; I would will- 
ingly have spit on the Iliad of Homer; and I would have 
gone on my knees to a ham. I can now quite under- 
stand the allegory of the companions of Ulysses being 
changed into swine by Circe. Circe was probably some 
lively creature like my little woman in rose. 

Shameful to relate, I experienced great delight in 
feeling myself overtaken by brutishness; I made no re- 
sistance, but assisted it as much as I could — so natural 
is depravity to man, and so much mire is there in the 
clay of which he is formed. 

‘‘Yet for one moment I feared the canker that was 
seizing upon me, and wished to leave my corrupter; but 
the floor seemed to have risen to my knees, and it was as 
though I were set fast in my place. 

“At last I took it on me to leave her, and, the even- 
ing being far advanced, I returned home much perplexed 
and troubled, and without very well knowing what to do. 
I hesitated between the prude and her opposite. I found 
voluptuousness in one and piquancy in the other, and 
after a most minute and searching self-examination, I 
found, not that I loved them both, for one as much for the 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


93 


other, to dream about them and be preoccupied with the 
thought of them. 

‘^To all appearance, my friend, I shall have one of 
these two women, and perhaps both; and yet I confess 
to you that the possession of them will only half satisfy 
me. It is not that they are not very pretty, but at sight 
of them nothing cried out within me, nothing panted, 
nothing said: ‘It is they.’ I did not recognize them. 
Nevertheless, I do not think that I shall meet with any- 
thing much better so far as birth and beauty are con- 
cerned, and De C advises me to go no further. I 

shall certainl}?- take his advice, and one or other of them 
will be my mistress, or the devil will take me before very 
long; but at the bottom of my heart a secret voice re- 
proaches me for being false to my love, and for stopping 
thus at the first smile of a woman for whom I care noth- 
ing, instead of seeking untiringly through the world, in 
cloisters and in evil places, in palaces and in taverns, for 
her who, whether she be princess or serving-maid, nun 
or courtesan, has been made for me and destined to me 
by God. 

“Then I say to myself that I am fancying chimeras, 
and that it is after all just the same whether I love one 
woman or another; that it will not cause the earth to de- 
viate by a hair’s breadth from its path, or the four seasons 
to reverse their order; that nothing in the world can be 
of smaller moment; and that I am very simple to tor- 
ment myself with such crochets. This is what I say to 
myself; but it is all in vain ! I am not more tranquil nor 
resolved than before. 

“This, perhaps, results from the fact that I live a 
great deal with myself, and that the most petty de- 
tails in a life so monotonous as mine assume too great 
an importance. I pay too much attention to my living 


94 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


and thinking. I hearken to the throbbing of my arteries, 
and the beatings of my heart; by dint of close attention 
I detach my most fleeting ideas from the cloudy vapor in 
which they float, and give them a body. If I acted more 
I should not perceive all these petty things, and I should 
not have time to be looking at my soul through a micro- 
scope, as I do the whole day long. The noise of action 
would put to flight this swarm of idle thoughts which 
flutter through my heart, and stun me with the buzzing 
of their wings. Instead of pursuing phantoms I should 
grapple with realities; I should ask from women only 
what they can give — pleasure; and I should not seek to 
embrace some fantastic ideal attired in cloudy perfections. 

^^This intense straining of the eye of my soul after an 
invisible object has distorted my vision. I cannot see 
what is for my gazing at what is not; and my eye, so keen 
for the ideal, is perfectly near-sighted in matters of real- 
ity. Thus I have known women who are declared charm- 
ing by everybody, and who appear to me to be anything 
but that. I have greatly admired pictures generally con- 
sidered bad, and odd or unintelligible verses have given 
me more pleasure than the most worthy production. I 
should not be astonished if, after offering up so many 
sights to the moon, staring so often at the stars, and com- 
posing so many elegies and sentimental apostrophes, I 
were to fall in love with some vulgar courtesan, or some 
ugly old woman. That would be a fine downfall ! Real- 
ity will, perhaps, revenge herself in this way for the care- 
lessness with which I have courted her. Would it not 
be a nice thing if I were to be smitten with a fine romantic 
passion for some awkward cross-patch or some abomin- 
able trollop ? Can you see me playing the guitar beneath 
a kitchen window, and ousted by a scullion carrying the 
pug of an old dowager who is getting rid of her last tooth? 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


95 


“ Perhaps, too, finding nothing in the world worthy of 
my love, I shall end by adoring myself, like the late 
Narcissus of egotistical memory. To secure myself 
against so great misfortune, I look into all the mirrors 
and all the brooks that I come across. In truth, with 
my reveries and aberrations, I am tremendously afraid of 
falling into the monstrous or unnatural. It is a serious 
matter, and I must take care. 

^‘Good-bye, my friend, I am going directly to see the 
lady in rose, lest I should give myself up to my custo- 
mary meditations. I do not think that we pay much at- 
tention to entelechia, and I imagine that anything we 
may do will have no connection with spiritualism, 
although she is a very spiritual creature; I carefully 
roll up the pattern of my ideal mistress, and 
put it away in a drawer, that I may not use it 
as a test with her. I wish to enjoy peacefully the beau- 
ties and the merits that she possesses. I wish to leave 
her attired in a robe that suits her, without trying to 
adapt for her the vesture that I have cut out beforehand, 
and at all hazards for the lady of my thoughts. These 
are very wise resolutions; I do not know whether I shall 
keep them. Once more, good-bye.” 


CHAPTER III 

I am the established lover of the lady in rose; it is al- 
most a calling or a charge, and gives one stability in 
society. I am no longer like a school boy seeking good 
luck among the grandmothers, and not venturing to 
utter a madrigal to a woman unless she is a centenarian. 

I perceive that since my installation people think more 
of me, that all the people speak to me with jealous 
coquetry, and put themselves very much about on my 
account. The men, on the contrary, are colder, and 
there is something of hostility and constraint in the few 
words that we exchange. They feel that they have in 
me a rival who is already formidable, and who may be- 
come more so. 

I have been told that many of them had criticised 
my manner of dress with bitterness, and said that it was 
too effeminate; that my hair was curled and glossed with 
over much care; that this, joined to my beardless face, 
gave me the most ridiculously foppish appearance; that 
for my garments I affected rich and splendid materials 
which had the odor of the theatre about them, and 
that I was more like an actor than a man — all the com- 
monplaces in fact that people utter in order to give them- 
selves the right of being dirty and of wearing sorry and 
badly-cut coats. But all this only serves to whitewash 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


97 


me, and all the ladies think that my hair is the handsom- 
est in the world, and that my refinements in dress are in 
the best taste, and they seem very much inclined to 
indemnify me for the expense I have gone to on their ac- 
count — for they are not so foolish as to believe that 
all this elegance is merely intended for my own personal 
adornment. 

‘^The lady of the house seemed at first somewhat 
piqued by my choice, which she thought must of neces- 
sity have fallen upon herself, and for a few days she har- 
bored some bitterness on account of it (towards her 
rival only ; for she has always spoken in the same way to 
me), which manifested itself in sundry little ^ My dears,’ 
uttered in that sharp, jerky manner which is the exclus- 
ive property of women, and in sundry unkind opinions 
respecting her toilet given in as loud a tone as possible, 
such as: ^Your hair is dressed a great deal too high, 
and does not suit your face in the least ; ’ or ‘ Your bodice 
is creased under the arms ; whoever made that dress for 
you?’ or, ^ You look very wearied; you seem quite 
changed ; ’ and a thousand other small observations, to 
which the other failed not to reply when an opportunity 
presented itself with all the malice that could be desired ; 
and if the opportunity did not come soon enough, she 
herself provided one for her own use, and gave back more 
than she had received. But another object diverting the 
attention of the slighted Infanta, this little wordy war 
soon came to an end, and things returned to their usual 
order. 

have told you summarily that I am the established 
lover of the lady in rose, but that is not enough for so 
exact a man as you. You will no doubt ask me what 
she is called. As to her name, I will not tell it to you ; 
but if you like, to facilitate the narrative, and in memory 

Maupin— 6 


98 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


of the color of the dress in which I saw her for the first 
time, we will call her Rosette; it is a pretty name, and it 
was thus that my little puss was called. 

You will wish to know in detail — for you love pre- 
cision in matters of this kind — the history of our loves 
with this fair Bradamant, and by what successive grada- 
tions I passed from the general to the particular, and 
from the condition of simple spectator to that of actor; 
how from being an indifferent onlooker I have become a 
lover. I will gratify your wish with the greatest of pleas- 
ure. There is nothing sinister in our romance. It is 
rose-colored, and no tears are shed in it save those of 
pleasure; no delays or repetitions are to be met with in 
it; and everything advances towards the end with the 
haste and swiftness so strongly recommended by Horace; 
it is a truly French romance. 

^‘Nevertheless, do not imagine that I carried the for- 
tress at the first assault. The Princess, though very 
humane towards her subjects, is not so lavish of her favors 
as one might think at first. She knows the value of 
them too well not to make you buy them; and she further 
knows too well the eagerness given to desire by apt delay 
and the flavor given to pleasure by a show of resistance, 
to surrender herself to you all at once, however strong 
the liking m.ay be with which you have inspired her. 

“To tell you the story in full I must go a little further 
back. I gave you a sufficiently circumstantial narrative of 
our first interview. I had one or two more in the same 
house, or perhaps three, and then she invited me to go 
to see her ; I did not wait to be pressed, as you may well 
believe ; I went at first with discretion, then somewhat 
oftener, then oftener still, and at last whenever I felt so 
inclined, and I must confess that that happened at least 
three or four times a day. The lady, after a few hours’ 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


99 


absence, always received me as if I had just returned 
from the East Indies ; I was very sensible of this, and it 
obliged me to show my gratitude in a manner marked 
with the greatest gallantry and tenderness in the world, 
to which she responded to the best of her ability. 

Rosette, since we have agreed to call her so, is a 
woman of great sense, and one who understands men 
admirably ; and although she delayed the conclusion of 
the chapter for some time, I was never once out of 
temper with her. This is truly wonderful, for you know 
the 'fine passions I fall into when I have not at once what 
I desire, and when a woman exceeds the time that I 
have assigned her, in my head, for her surrender. 

I do not know how she managed it, but from the 
first interview she gave me to understand that I should 
have her, and I was more sure of it than if I had the 
promise written and signed with her own hand. It will 
be said, perhaps, that the boldness and ease of her man- 
ners left the ground clear for the rashness of hopes. I 
do not think that this can be the true reason; I have seen 
some women whose extraordinary freedom excluded in a 
measure the very shadow of a doubt, who have yet not 
produced this effect upon me, and with whom I have ex- 
perienced timidity and disquietude when they were the 
least out of place. 

‘‘What makes me in general much less amiable with 
the women I wish to have than with those about whom I 
am unconcerned, is the passionate waiting for the oppor- 
tunity, and the uncertainty in which I am respecting the 
success of my undertaking; this makes me gloomy, and 
throws me into a delirium, which robs me of many of 
my talents and much of my presence of mind. When I 
see the hours which I had destined for a different em- 
ployment escaping one by one, anger seizes me in spite 


lOO 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


of myself, and I cannot prevent myself from saying very 
sharp and bitter things, which are sometimes even brutal, 
and which throw things back a hundred leagues. With 
Rosette I felt nothing of all this; never, even when she 
was resisting me the most, had I the idea that she wished 
to escape n.y love. I allowed her quietly to display all 
her little coquetries, and I endured with patience the 
somewhat long delays which it pleased her to inflict on 
my ardor. Her severity had something smiling in it 
which consoled you as much as possible, and in her most 
Hyrcanian cruelties you had a glimpse of a background 
of humanity, which hardly allowed you to have any ser- 
ious fear. 

^Wirtuous women, even when they are least so, have 
a cross and disdainful appearance which to me is intoler- 
able. They always look as if they were ready to ring 
the bell, and have you kicked out of the house by their 
lackeys; and I really think that a man who takes the 
trouble to pay his addresses to a woman (which as it is, 
is not so agreeable as one would fain believe) does not 
deserve to be looked at in that way. 

‘^Our dear Rosette has no such looks — and, I assure 
you, that it is to her advantage. She is the only woman 
with whom I have been myself, and I have the conceit 
to say that I have never been so good. My wit is freely 
displayed, and by the dexterity and the fire of her replies 
she has made me discover more than I credited myself 
with, and more, perhaps, than I really have. It is true 
that I have not been very logical; that is scarcely possible 
with her. It is not, however, that she has not her poet- 
ical side, in spite of what De C— — said about it; but 
she is so full of life, and force, and movement, she seems 
so well off in the atmosphere in which she is, that one 
has no wish to leave it in order to ascend into the clouds. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


lOI 


She fills real life so agreeably, and makes such an amus- 
ing thing of it for herself and others, that dreamland 
has nothing better to offer you. 

^^What a wonderful thing! I have known her now 
for nearly two months, and during that time I have felt 
weary only when I was not with her. You will acknowl- 
edge that it is no ordinary woman that can produce such 
an effect, for usually women produce just the reverse 
effect upon me, and please me much more at a distance 
than when close at hand. 

^‘Rosette has the best disposition in the world, with 
men, be it understood, for with women she is as wicked 
as a devil. She is gay, lively, alert, ready for everything, 
very original in her way of speaking, and always with 
some charming and unexpected drolleries to say to you. 
She is a delicious companion, a pretty comrade rather 
than a mistress, and if I had a few years more and a few 
romantic ideas less, it would be all one to me, and I 
should even esteem myself the most fortunate mortal in 
existence. But — but — a particle which announces noth- 
ing good, and this little limiting devil of a word is unfor- 
tunately more used than any other in all human lan- 
guages — but I am a fool, an idiot, a veritable ninny who 
can be satisfied with nothing, and who is always conjur- 
ing up difficulties where none exist, and I am only half 
happy instead of being wholly so. Half is a good deal 
for this world of ours, and yet I do not find it enough. 

In the eyes of all the world I have a mistress whom 
many wish for and envy me, and whom no one would 
disdain. My desire is therefore apparently fulfilled, and 
I have no longer any right to pick quarrels with fate. 
Yet I do not seem to have a mistress; I understand by 
reasoning that such is the case, but I do not feel it to be 
so, and if some one were to ask me unexpectedly whether 


102 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


I had one, I believe I should answer ‘No.* Neverthe- 
less the possession of a woman who has beauty and wit 
constitutes what at all times and in all lands has been and 
is called having a mistress, and I do not think that any 
other mode exists. This does not prevent me from hav- 
ing the strangest doubts on the subject, and it has gone 
so far that if several persons were to conspire to affirm 
to me that I am not Rosette’s favored lover, I should, in 
spite of the palpable evidence to the contrary, end by 
believing them. 

“ Do not imagine from what I have told you that I do 
not love her, or that she displeases me in any way. On 
the contrary, I love her very much, and I find her, as all 
the rest of the world will find her, a pretty, piquant crea- 
ture. I simply do not feel that I have her, and that is 
all. And yet no woman has ever given me so much 
pleasure, and if ever I have understood what voluptuous- 
ness is, it was in her arms. A single kiss from her, the 
chastest of her endearments, makes me quiver to the 
soles of my feet, and sends all my blood flowing back to 
my heart. Account for all this if you can. It is just as 
I tell you. But the heart of man is full of such absurd- 
ities, and if it were necessary to reconcile all its contra- 
dictions, we should have enough to do. 

“What can be the origin of this? In truth I do not 
know. 

“ I see her the whole day, and even the whole night if 
I wish. I give her all the caresses that I please. Her 
complaisance is inexhaustible, and she enters thoroughly 
into all my caprices, however whimsical they may be. 
One evening I took a fancy to caress her in the midst 
of the drawing-room, with the lustre and candles lighted, 
a fire on the hearth, the easy chairs arranged as if for a 
great evening reception, she dressed for a ball with her 


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MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


103 


bouquet and fan, all her diamonds on her fingers and 
neck, plumes on her head, and in the most splendid cos- 
tume possible, while I myself was dressed like a bear. 
She gave her consent to it. When all was ready the ser- 
vants were greatly surprised to receive an order not to 
allow anybody to come up; they did not seem to under- 
stand it in the least, and they went off with a dazed look 
which made us laugh greatly. Without doubt they 
thought that their mistress was distinctly mad, but what 
they did or did not think was of little moment to us. 

‘‘It was the drollest evening of my life. Imagine to 
yourself the appearance I must have presented with my 
plumed hat under my paw, rings on all my claws, a little 
sword with a silver guard, and a sky-blue ribbon at the 
hilt. I approached the fair one, and after making her a 
most graceful bow, seated myself by her side, and laid 
siege to her in all due form. The affected madrigals, 
the exaggerated gallantries which I addressed to her, all 
the jargon of the occasion was singularly set off by pass- 
ing through my bear’s muzzle, for I had a superb head 
of painted cardboard, which, however, I was soon obliged 
to throw under the table, so adorable was my deity that 
evening, and so greatly did I long to kiss her hand, and 
something better than her hand. The skin followed close 
on the head, for not being accustomed to play the bear, 
I was great stifled in it and more so than was necessary. 

“Do you not think this fine enough to be recorded in 
history beside the most splendid deeds of the heroes of 
antiquity ? The greatest proof- of love that a woman can 
give her lover is not to say to him: ‘Take care not to 
rumple me or crush me,’ especially if her dress is new 
A new dress is a stronger motive for a husband’s security 
than is commonly believed. Rosette must worship me, or 
she possesses a philosophy superior to that of Epictetus, 


104 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


However, I think that I paid Rosette the worth of 
her dress and more in a coin which is not the less es- 
teemed and prized that it does not pass current with the 
shopkeepers. So much heroism well deserved a like 
reward. Besides, like a generous woman, she well re- 
paid what I gave her. I had a mad, almost convulsive 
pleasure, such as I did not believe myself capable of 
feeling. Those sounding kisses mingled with piercing 
laughs, those quivering and most impatient caresses, all 
that acrid and irritating voluptuousness, that pleasure 
tasted incompletely by reason of place and situation, but 
keener a hundred times than if it had been without 
impediment, had such an effect on my nerves that I was 
seized with spasms, from which I recovered with diffi- 
culty. 

You cannot imagine the tender and proud air with 
which Rosette looked at me, and the manner, full of joy 
and disquietude, in which she busied herself about me. 
Her face still radiated the pleasure which she felt at pro- 
ducing such an effect upon me, while at the same time 
her eyes, bathed in gentle tears, bore witness to the fear 
that she experienced at seeing me ill, and the interests 
she took in my health. Never has she appeared to me 
so beautiful as she did at that moment. There was 
something so material and so chaste in her look, that I 
totally forgot the more than Anacreonic scene which had 
just taken place, and, kneeling before her, asked per- 
mission to kiss her hand. This she granted me with singu- 
lar gravity and dignity. 

“Assuredly such a woman is not so depraved as De 

C pretends, and as she has often seemed to myself. 

Her corruption is of the mind, and not of the heart. 

“ I have quoted this scene to you from among twenty 
others, and it seems to me that after this a man might. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 


105 

without extreme conceit, believe himself to be a woman’s 
lover. Well, it is what I do not do. I had scarcely re- 
turned home when the same thought again took possess- 
ion of me, and began to torment me as usual. I re- 
membered perfectly all that I had done and seen done. 
The most trivial gestures and attitudes, all the most petty 
details, were very clearly delineated in my memory ; I 
recalled everything, to the lightest inflections of voice 
and the most fleeting ^shades of voluptuousness; only it 
did not seem to me that all things had happened to rny- 
self rather than to another. I was not sure that it was 
not an illusion, a phantasmagoria, a dream, or that I had 
not read it somewhere, or even that it was not a tale 
composed by myself, just as similar ones had often been 
made by me. I was afraid of being the dupe of my own 
credulity and the butt of some hoax ; and I would have 
been ready to believe that I had put myself under my 
bedclothes at my usual time, and had slept till morning. 

I am very unfortunate in not having the capacity to 
acquire the moral certainty of a thing, the physical 
certainty of which I possess. Generally the reverse 
happens, and it is the fact that proves the idea. 
I would fain prove the fact to myself by the idea ; 
I cannot do so ; though this is singular enough, it 
is the case. The possession of a mistress depends upon 
myself to a certain point, but I cannot bring myself up to 
believe that I have one while having her all the time. 
If I have not the necessary faith within me, even for 
something so evident as this, it is as impossible for me 
to believe in so simple a fact as it is for another to believe 
in the Trinity. Faith is not acquired ; it is purely a gift, 
a special grace from Heaven. 

Never has any one desired so strongly as myself to 
live the life of others, and to assimilate another nature ; 


io6 MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 

never has any one succeeded less in doing so. What- 
ever I may do, other men are to me scarcely 
anything but phantoms, and I have no sense of their 
existence; yet is not the desire to recognize their 
life and to participate in it that is wanting in me. 
It is the power, or the lack of real sympathy for any- 
thing. The existence or non-existence of a thing or 
person does not interest me sufficiently to affect me in a 
sensible convincing manner. 

“The sight of a woman or a man who appears to me 
in real life leaves no stronger traces upon my soul than 
the fantastic vision of a dream. About me there moves, 
with dull humming sound, a pale world of shadows and 
semblances false or true, in the midst of which I am as 
isolated as possible, for none of them acts on me for 
good or evil, and they seem to me to be of quite a differ- 
ent nature. If I speak to them, and they reply to me 
with something like common-sense, I am as much sur- 
prised as if my dog or my cat were suddenly to begin to 
speak and mingle in the conversation. The sound of 
their voice always astonishes me, and I would be very 
ready to believe that they are merely fleeting appearances 
whose objective mirror I am. Inferior or superior, I am 
certainly not of their kind. 

“There are moments when I recognize none save God 
above me, and others, when I judge myself scarcely the 
equal of the wood-louse beneath its stone, or the mollusc 
on its sand- bank; but in whatever state of my mind I 
may be, whether lofty or depressed, I have never been 
able to ‘persuade myself that men were really my fellows. 
When people call me ‘ Sir,’ or in speaking about me, say, 
‘ this man, ’ it appears very singular to me. Even my name 
seems to me but an empty one, and not in reality mine, 
yet no matter in how low a tone it be pronounced amidst 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


107 


the loudest noise, I turn suddenly with a convulsive and 
feverish eagerness for which I hd've never been able to 
account to myself. Can it be the dread of finding in this 
man who knows my name, and to whom I am no longer 
one of the crowd, an antagonist or an enemy ? 

It is especially when I have been living with a wo- 
man that I have most felt the invincible repugnance of 
my nature to any alliance or mixture. I am like a drop 
of oil in a glass of water. It is in vain that you turn and 
move the latter; the oil can never unite with it. It will 
divide itself into a hundred thousand little globules which 
will reunite and mount again to the surface as soon as 
there is a moment’s calm. The drop of oil and the glass 
of water — such is my history. Even voluptuousness, 
that diamond chain which binds all creatures together, 
that devouring fire which melts the rocks and metals of 
the soul, and makes them fall in tears, as material fire 
causes iron and granite to melt, has never, all powerful 
as it is, succeeded in taming and affecting me. Yet my 
senses are very keen, but my soul is to my body a hostile 
sister, and the hapless couple, lawful or unlawful, live in 
a state of perpetual war. A woman’s arms, the closest 
bonds on earth, so people say, are very feeble ties, so far 
as I am concerned, and I have never been further re- 
moved from my mistress than when she was pressing me 
to her heart. I was stifled, that was all. 

How many times have I been angered with myself ! 
How many efforts have I made not to be as I am ! How 
have I exhorted myself to be tender, amorous, impas- 
sioned ! How often have I taken my soul by the hair, 
and dragged her to my lips in the midst of a beautiful 
kiss ! Whatever I did she always retreated as soon as I 
released her. What torture for this poor soul to be pres- 
ent at the debauches of my body, and to sit everlastingly 


io8 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


at banquets where she has nothing to eat . 

It was with Rosette that I resolved, once for all, to 
try whether I was not decidedly unsociable, and whether 
I could take sufficient interest in the existence of another 
to believe in it. I pushed my experiments to the point 
of exhaustion, and I did not become much clearer amid 
my doubts. With her, pleasure is so keen that often 
enough the soul is, if not moved, at least diverted, and 
this somewhat prejudices the exactness of my observa- 
tions. But after all I came to see that it did not pass 
beyond the skin, and that I had only an epidermic enjoy- 
ment in which the soul took no part save from curiosity. 

I have pleasure, because I am young and ardent; but 
this pleasure comes to me from myself and not from 
another. The cause of it is in myself rather than in 
Rosette. 

“ My efforts are in vain, I cannot come out of myself. 

I am still what I was, something, that is to say, very 
wearied and very wearisome, and this displeases me 
greatly. I have not succeeded in getting into my brain 
the idea of another, into my soul the feeling of another, 
into my body the pain or joy of another. I am a pris- 
oner within myself, and all invasion is impossible. The 
prisoner wdshes to escape, the walls would most gladly 
fall in, and the gates open up to let him through, but 
some fatality or other invincibly keeps each stone in its 
place, and each bolt in its socket. It is impossible for 
me to admit any one to see me as it is for me to go to 
see others, I can neither pay visits nor receive them, and 
I live in the most mournful isolation in the midst of the 
crowd. My bed perhaps is not widowed, but my heart 
is so always. 

“Ah! to be unable to increase one’s self by a single 
particle, a single atom; to be unable to make the blood 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


109 

of others flow in one’s veins; to see ever with one’s own 
eyes, and not more clearly, nor further, nor differently; 
to hear sounds with the same ears and the same emotion; 
to touch with the same fingers; to perceive things that 
are varied with an organ that is invariable; to be con- 
demned to the same quality of voice, to the return of the 
same tones, the same phrases, and the same words, and 
to be unable to go away, to avoid one’s self, to take re- 
fuge in some corner where there is no self-pursuit; to be 
obliged to keep one’s self always, to dine with it, and go 
to bed with it; to be the same man for twenty new wo- 
men; to drag into the midst of the strangest situations 
in the drama of our life a reluctant character whose role 
you know by heart; to think the same things, and to 
have the same dreams; what torment, what weariness ! 

‘‘I have longed for the horn of the brothers Tangut, 
the hat of Fortunatus, the staff of Abaris, the ring of 
Gyges; I would have sold my soul to snatch the magic 
wand from the hand of a fairy; but I have never wished 
so much for anything as, like Tiresias the soothsayer, to 
meet on the mountain the serpents which cause a change 
of sex; and what I envy most in the monstrous and^^ 
whimsical gods of India are their perpetual avatars and 
their countless transformations. 

I began by desiring to be another man; then, on re- 
flecting that I might by analogy nearly foresee what I 
should feel, and thus not experience the surprise and the 
change that I had looked for, I would have preferred to 
be a woman. This idea has always come to me when I 
had a mistress who was not ugly — for to me an ugly wo- 
man is a man — and at the moments of pleasure I would 
willingly have changed my part, for it is very provoking 
to be unaware of the effect that one produces, and to 
judge of the enjoyment of others only by one’s own. 


no 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


These thoughts, and many others, have often given me, 
at times when it was most out of place, a meditative and 
dreamy air, which has led to my being accused, really 
most undeservedly, of coldness and infidelity. 

Rosette, who very happily does not know all this, be- ' 
lieves me the most lovable man on earth; she takes this 
impotent transport for a transport of passion; and to the 
best of her ability she lends herself to all the experimen- 
tal caprices that enter my head. 

“I have done all that I could to convince myself that 
I possess her. I have tried to descend into her heart, 
but I have always stopped at the first step of the stair- 
case, at her skin or on her mouth. In spite of the inti- 
macy of our relations, I am very sensible that there is 
nothing in common between us. Never has an idea sim- 
ilar to mine spread its wings in that young and smiling 
head; never has that heart, full of life and fire, that 
heaves with its throbbing so firm and pure a breast, 
beaten in unison with my heart. My soul has never 
united with that soul. Cupid, the god with hawk’s wings, 
has not kissed Psyche on her beautiful ivory brow. No ! 
this woman is not my mistress. 

If you knew all that I have done to compel my soul to 
share in the love of my body, the frenzy with which I have 
plunged my mouth into hers, and steeped my arms in her 
hair, and how closely I have strained her round and sup- 
ple form ! Like the ancient Salmacis, enamored of the 
young Hermaphrodite, I strove to blend her body with 
mine; I drank her breath and the tepid tears caused by 
voluptuousness to overflow from the brimming chalice of 
her eyes. The more our bodies were entwined, and the 
closer our embraces, the less I loved her. My soul, 
seated mournfully, gazed with an air of pity on this 
lamentable marriage, to which she was not invited, or 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


III 


veiling her face in disgust, wept silently beneath the 
skirt of her cloak. All this comes perhaps from the fact 
that in reality I do not love Rosette, worthy as she is of 
being loved, and wishful as I am to love her. 

^^To get rid of the idea that I was myself, I devised 
very strange surroundings, in which it was altogether 
improbable that I would encounter myself, and not being 
able to cast my individuality to the dogs, I endeavored 
to place it in such a different element that it would recog- 
nize itself no longer. I had but indifferent success, and 
this devil of a self pursues me obstinately ; there are no 
means of getting rid of it. I cannot resort to telling it 
like other intruders that I am out, or that I have gone to 
the country. 

‘‘Rosette worships me chiefly and above all others. 
She sees the eagerness of a petulant love which nothing 
can restrain, and which is the same, notwithstanding the 
diversity of times and places. She sees the constantly 
reviving effect of her charms, and the triumph of her 
beauty ; truly, I wish that she were right, and to be just, 
it is neither my fault nor hers that she is not. 

“The only respect in which I wrong her is that I am 
myself. If I were to tell her this, the child would very 
quickly reply that is just my greatest merit in her eyes; 
which would be more kind than sensible. 

“Once — it was at the beginning of our union — I be- 
lieved that I had attained my end, for one minute I be- 
lieved that I had loved — I did love. Oh! my friend, I have 
never lived save during that minute, and had that minute' 
been an hour I should have become a God. We had 
both gone out on horseback, I on my dear Ferragus, she 
on a mare as white as snow, and with the look of a uni- 
corn, so slim were its legs and so slender its neck. We 
were following a large avenue of elms of prodigious 


II2 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


height ; the sun was descending upon us lukewarm and 
golden, sifted through the slashings in the foliage j lozen- 
ges of ultramarine sparkled here and there through the 
dappled clouds, great lines of pale blue strewed the edge 
of the horizon, changing into an apple-green of exquisite 
tenderness when they met with the orange- colored tints 
of the west. The aspect of the heavens was charming 
and strange ; the breeze brought to us an odor of wild 
flowers that was ravishing in the extreme. From time 
to time a bird rose before us, and crossed the avenue 
singing. 

‘^The bell of a villiage that was not visible was gently 
ringing the Angelus, and the silver sounds, which reached 
us weakened by the distance, were infinitely sweet. 
Our animals were at a walk, and were going so equally 
side by side, that one was not in advance of the other. 
My heart expanded, and my soul overflowed my body. 
I had never been so happy. I said nothing, nor did 
Rosette, and yet we had never understood each other 
so well. We were so close together that my leg was 
touching the body of Rosette’s horse. I leaned 
over to her, and passed my arm about her waist; she 
made the same movement on her side, and laid back 
her head upon my shoulder. Our lips clung together ; 
oh! what a chaste and delicious kiss! Our horses were 
still walking with their bridles floating on their necks. I 
felt Rosette’s arm relax, and her loins yield more and 
more. For myself I was growing weak, and was ready 
to swoon. Ah! I can assure you at that momeut I 
thought little of whether I was myself or another. We 
went thus as far as the end of the avenue, when the noise 
of feet made us abruptly resume our positions ; it was 
some people of our acquaintance, also on horseback, 
who came up and spoke to us. If I had had pistols, I 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


113 


believe that I should have fired upon them. 

I looked at them with a gloomy and furious air, 
which must have appeared very singular to them. After 
all, I was wrong to become so angry with them, for they 
had, without intending it, done me the service of inter- 
rupting my pleasure at the very moment when, by reason 
of its own intensity, it was on the point of becoming a 
pain, or of sinking beneath its own violence. The 
science of stopping in time is not regarded with all the 
respect which is its due. 

Be that as it may, in spite of the interruption, or by 
reason of it, never did such voluptuousness pass over 
my head ; I really felt myself to be another. The soul of 
Rosette had entered in its integrity into my body. My 
soul had left me, and filled her heart as her own soul 
filled mine. No doubt they had met on the way in that 
long equestrian kiss, as Rosette afterwards called it 
(which by the way annoyed me), and had crossed each 
other, and mingled together as intimately as is possible 
for the souls of two mortal creatures on a grain of perish- 
able mud. 

‘‘The angels must surely embrace one another thus, 
and the true paradise is not in the sky, but on the lips of 
one we love. 

“ I have waited in vain for a similar moment, and I 
have tried, but without success, to provoke its return. 
We have very often gone to ride in the avenue of the 
wood during beautiful sunsets ; the trees had the same 
verdure, the birds were singing the same song, but the 
sun looked dull to us, and the foliage yellowed ; the sing- 
ing of the birds seemed harsh and discordant, for there 
was no longer harmony within ourselves. We have 
brought our horses to a walk, and we have tried the same 
kiss. Alas ! our lips only were united, and it was but 

Maupin— 7 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


114 

the spectre of the old kiss. The beautiful, the sublime, 
the divine, the only true kiss that I have ever given and 
received in my life had disappeared for ever. Since that 
day I have always returned from the wood with a depth 
of inexpressible sadness. Rosette, gay and playful as 
she usually is, cannot escape from the impression of this, 
and her reverie is betrayed by a little, delicately wrinkled 
pout, which at the least is worth her smile. 

“There is scarcely anything but the fumes of wine, 
and the brilliancy of wax-candles that can recall me from 
these melancholy thoughts. We both drink like persons 
condemned to death, silently and continually, until we 
have reached the necessary dose; then we begin to laugh 
and to make fun most heartily of what we call our senti- 
mentality. 

“We laugh — because we cannot weep. Ah ! who will 
cause a tear to spring in the depths of my exhausted eye ? 

“Why had I so much pleasure that evening ? It would 
be very difficult to say. Nevertheless I was the same 
man and Rosette the same woman. It was not the first 
time that either of us was out riding. We had seen the 
sun set before, and the spectacle had only affected us like 
the sight of a picture which is admired according as its 
colors are more or less brilliant. There are more aven- 
ues of elms and chestnut trees than one in the world, 
and it was not the first that we were passing through. 
Who, then, caused us to find in it so sovereign a' charm, 
who metamorphosed the dead leaves into topazes, and 
the green leaves into emeralds, who had gilded all those 
fluttering atoms, and changed into pearls all those drops 
of water scattered on the sward, who gave so sweet a 
harmony to the sounds of a usually discordant bell, and 
to the carolling of sundry little birds ? There must have 
been some very searching poetry in the air, since even 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


115 


our horses appeared to be sensible of it. 

‘'Yet nothing in the world could have been more pas- 
toral and more simple. Some trees, some clouds, five 
or six blades of wild thyme, a woman, and a ray of the sun 
falling across it all like a golden chevron on a coat of 
arms. I had, further, no sensation of surprise or aston- 
ishment ! I knew where I was very well. I had never 
come to the place before, but I recollected perfectly both 
the shape of the leaves and the position of the clouds; 
the white dove which was crossing the sky was flying 
away in the same direction — the little silvery bell which 
I heard for the first time had very often tinkled in my 
ear, and its voice seemed to me like the voice of a friend; 
without having ever been there I had many times passed 
through the avenue with princesses mounted on unicorns; 
my most voluptuous dreams used to resort thither every 
evening, and my desires had given kisses there precisely 
similar to that exchanged by Rosette and myself. 

“The kiss had no novelty to me, but it was such a one 
as I had thought that it would be. It was perhaps the 
only time in my life that I was not disappointed, and that 
the reality appeared to me as beautiful as the ideal. If 
I could find a woman, a landscape, a piece of architect- 
ure, anything answering to my intimate desire as perfectly 
as that minute answered to the minute of my dreams, I 
should have no reason to envy the gods, and I would 
very willingly resign my stall in paradise. But in truth, 
I do not believe that a man of flesh could withstand such 
penetrating voluptuousness for an hour — two kisses such 
as that one would pump out an entire existence, and 
would make a complete void in soul and body. This is 
not a consideration that would stop me, for, not being 
able to prolong my life indefinitely, I am indifferent to 
death, and I would rather die of pleasure than of old 


ii6 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


age or weariness. 

“But this woman does not exist. Yes, she does exist. 
It may be that I am separated from her merely by a par- 
tition! It may be that I have jostled her yesterday or 
to-day. 

“What is lacking in Rosette that she is not that wo- 
man? She lacks my belief in her. What fatality is it 
that causes me ever to have for my mistress women whom 
I do not love. Her neck is smooth enough to hang on 
it necklaces of the finest workmanship; her fingers are 
tapering enough to do honor to the finest and richest 
rings; rubies would blush with pleasure to sparkle at the 
rosy extremity of her delicate ear; her waist might gird 
on the cestus of Venus; but it is love alone who can knot 
his mother’s scarf. 

“All the merit that Rosette possesses is in herself, I 
have lent her nothing. I have not cast over her beauty 
that veil of perfection with which love envelopes the 
loved one; the veil of Isis is transparent beside such a 
one as that. Nothing but satiety can raise a corner of 
it. 

“ I do not love Rosette; at least the love, if any, which 
I have for her has no resemblance to the idea that I have 
formed of love. Still my idea is perhaps not correct. I 
do not venture to give any decision. However, she ren- 
ders me quite insensible to the merit of other women, 
and I have never wished for anybody with any consistency 
since possessing her. If she has cause to be jealous of 
any, it is only of phantoms, and they do not disquiet her 
much. Yet my imagination is her most formidable rival; 
it is a thing which, with all her acuteness, she will prob- 
ably never find out. 

“ If women knew this ! Of what infidelities is not the 
least volatile lover guilty towards his most worshipped 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


117 

mistress ! It is to be presumed that the women pay us 
back with interest; but they do as we do, and say noth- 
ing about it. A mistress is an obligato, which usually 
disappears beneath its graces and flourishes. Very often 
the kisses she receives are not for her; it is the idea of 
another woman that is embraced in her person, and she 
often profits (if such can be called a profit) by the desires 
which are inspired by another. Ah ! how many times, 
poor Rosette, have you served to embody my dreams, 
and given a reality to your rivals ! How many the infi- 
delities in which you have been the involuntary accom- 
plice ! If you could have thought at those moments 
when my arms clasped you with so much intensity, when 
my lips vrere united most closely to yours, that your 
beauty and your love counted for nothing, and that the 
thought of you was a thousand leagues away from me ! 
If you had been told that those eyes veiled with amor- 
ous languor, were cast down only that they might not see 
you and so dissipate the illusion that you merely served 
to complete, and that instead of being a mistress you 
were but an instrument of voluptuousness, a means of 
deceiving, a desire impossible of realization ! 

‘‘O celestial creatures, beautiful virgins, frail and dia- 
phanous, who bend your pervinca eyes and clasp your 
lily hands on the golden background of the pictures of 
the old German masters, window saints, missal-martyrs 
who smile so sweetly amid the scrolls of arabesques, and 
emerge so fair and fresh from the bells of flowers ! O 
beautiful courtesans lying draped in your hair on beds 
strewn with roses, beneath broad purple curtains with 
your bracelets and necklaces of huge pearls, your fan, 
your mirrors where the west hangs in the shadow a flam- 
ing spangle ! brown daughters of Titian, who display so 
voluptuously to us your unduly ^mg hips, your firm and 


ii8 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


compact thighs, your smooth bodies, and your supple 
and muscular loins ! ancient goddesses, who rear your 
white phantom in the shadows of the garden ! you form 
a part of my seraglio; I have caressed you all in turn. 
Saint Ursula, on Rosette’s beautiful hands I have kissed 
thine; I have played with the black hair of the Muranese, 
and never had Rosette more trouble in dressing her hair 
again; maidenly Diana, I have been with thee more than 
Actseon, and I have not been changed into a stag; I have 
replaced thy beautiful Endymion ! How many rivals, 
who are unsuspected, and on whom no vengeance can 
be taken ! Yet they are not always painted or sculp- 
tured ! 

“Women, when you see your lover become more ten- 
der than is his wont, and strain you in his arms with ex- 
traordinary emotion; when he sinks his head into your 
lap, and, raises it again with humid and wandering eyes; 
when enjoyment only augments his desire, and he stifles 
your voice with kisses, as though he feared to hear it, be 
certain that he does not know even whether you are there; 
that he is keeping tryst at this moment with a chimera 
which you render palpable, and whose part you play. 
Many chamber-maids have profited by the love inspired 
by queens. Many women have profited by the love in- 
spired by goddesses, and a vulgar enough reality has 
often served as a socle for an ideal idol. That is the rea- 
son why poets usually take trollops for their mistresses. 
A man might be ten years with a woman without having 
ever seen her; such is the history of many great geniuses 
whose ignoble or obscene connections have astonished 
the world. 

“I have been guilty only of infidelities of this descrip- 
tion towards Rosette. I have betrayed her only for pic- 
tures and statues, and she has shared equally in the be- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


119 

trayal. I have not the smallest material trespass on my 
conscience to reproach myself with. I am in this respect 
as white as the snow on the Jungfrau, and yet, without 
being in love with any one, I would wish to be with some 
one. I do not seek an opportunity, and I should not be 
sorry were it to come; if it came, I should perhaps not 
avail myself of it, for I have an intimate conviction that 
it would be the same with another, and I had rather it 
were thus with Rosette than with any other; for, putting 
the woman one side, there remains to me at least a pretty 
companion, full of wit, and very agreeably demoralized; 
and this consideration is not one of the least that restrain 
me, for, in losing the mistress, I should be grieved to 
lose the friend.” 


CHAPTER IV 


‘‘Do you know that for nearly five months — yes, for 
quite five months — for five eternities, I have been Ma- 
dame Rosette’s established Celadon? It is perfectly 
splendid. I should never have believed that I was so 
constant, nor, I will wager, should she have believed it 
either. We are, in truth, a couple of plucked pigeons, 
for only turtle doves could display such tenderness. 
What billing ! What cooing ! What ivy-like entwinings. 
What a two-fold existence ! Nothing in the world could 
have been more touching, and our two poor little hearts 
might have been put on one cartel, pierced by the same 
spit, with a gusty flame. 

“Five months tete-a-tete^ so to speak, for we have 
been seeing each other every day and nearly every night 
— the door always closed to everybody; is it not enough 
to make one shudder to think of it ! Well, to the glory 
of the peerless Rosette, it must be said that I have not 
been over-much wearied, and that this period will no 
doubt prove to have been the most agreeable in my life. 
I do not believe that it would be possible to occupy a 
man devoid of passion in a more sustained and amusing 
manner, and God knows what a terrible idleness is that 
which proceeds from an empty heart ! It would be im- 
possible to form any idea of this woman’s resources. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


I2I 


She commenced by drawing them from her intellect, and 
then from her heart, for she loves me to adoration. With 
what art does she profit by the smallest spark, and how 
well she knows how to convert it into a conflagration ! 
how skilfully she directs the faintest movements of the 
soul ! how well can she turn languor into tender dream- 
ing ! and by how many indirect paths can she guide the 
mind that is wandering back to herself again ! It is 
wonderful ! And I admire her as one of the loftiest gen- 
iuses that can exist. 

‘^1 came to see her very cross, in a very bad 
temper, and seeking a quarrel. I know not how the sorcer- 
ess managed it, but at the end of a few minutes she had 
obliged me to pay her compliments, although I had not 
the least wish to do so, and to kiss her hands and laugh 
with all my heart, although I was terribly angry. Is 
such tyranny conceivable ? Nevertheless, skilful as she 
is, the tete-a-tete cannot last much longer ; and, during the 
past fortnight, I pretty often chanced to do what I have 
never done before, to the books that are open on the table, 
and read a few lines in the intervals of conversation. Ros 
ette noticed it, and was struck with dismay, which she was 
scarcely able to conceal, and she sent away all the books 
out of the room. I confess that I regret them, although 
I cannot ask for them again. 

The other day — frightful symptom! — some one called 
while we were together, and instead of being furious, as 
I used to be at the beginning, I experiencad a kind of 
joy. I was almost amiable ; I kept up the conversation 
which Rosette was trying to let drop so that the 
gentlemen might take his leave, and, when he was 
gone, I volunteered the remark that he was not without 
wit, and that his society was agreeable. Rosette re- 
minded me that two months before I had thought him 


122 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 


stupid, and the silliest nuisance on earth, to which I 
had nothing to reply, for I had indeed said so. I was 
nevertheless right, in spite of my recent contradiction : 
for the first time he disturbed a charming tete-a-tete, 
and the second time he came to the assistance 
of a conversation that was exhausted and languishing 
(on one side at least), and for the day spared me a scene 
of tenderness somewhat fatiguing to go through. 

“Such is our position. It is a grave one — especially 
when one of the two is still enamoured, and clings 
desperately to what remains of the other’s love. I am in 
great perplexity. Although I am not in love with Ros- 
ette, I have a very great affection for her, and I should 
not like to do anything that would cause her pain. I 
wish to believe, as long as possible, that I love her. 

“In gratitude for all those hours to which she has 
given wings, in gratitude for the love which, for my 
pleasure, she has bestowed on me, I wish it. I shall de- 
ceive her, but is not an agreeable deception better than a 
distressing truth ? for I shall never have the heart to tell 
her that I do not love her. The vain shadow of love on 
which she feasts appears so adorable to her, she em- 
braces the pale spectre with such intoxication and effu- 
sion that I dare not cause it to vanish ; yet I am afraid that 
in the end she will perceive that, after all, it is but a phan- 
tom. This morning we had a conversation, which I am 
going to relate in dramatic form for the sake of greater 
fidelity, and which makes me fear that we cannot pro- 
long our union very long. 

“Rosette (seeing that I am no longer asleep) — the 
nasty sleeper! ’ 

“Myself (yawning) — ^ A — a — ah ! ’ 

“ Rosette— ‘ Do not yawn like that, or I will not kiss 
you for a week. ’ 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


123 


‘‘Myself — ‘ Oh! ’ 

“Rosette — ‘I t seems, sir, that you do not think it 
very important that I should kiss you ? ’ 

“Myself — ‘Y es I do. ’ 

“ Rosette — ‘ How carelessly you say that! Very well; 
you may expect that for the next week I shall not touch 
you with the tip of my lips. To-day is Tuesday — so till 
next Tuesday.’ 

“Myself — ‘ Pshaw ! ’ 

“ Rosette — ‘ How, pshaw ! ’ 

“ Myself — ‘ Yes, pshaw! You will kiss me before this 
evening, or I die.’ % 

“Rosette — ‘Y ou will die! What a coxcomb! I have 
spoiled you, sir.’ 

“Myself — ‘ I will live. I am not a coxcomb, and you 
have not spoiled me — quite the contrary. First of all, I 
request the suppression of the Sir; you are well enough 
acquainted with me to call me by my name, and to say 
thou to me.’ 

“Rosette — ‘I have spoiled thee, D’ Albert.’ 

“ Myself — ‘G ood. Now bring your lips near.’ 

“Rosette — ‘N o, next Tuesday.’ 

“ Myself — ‘ Nonsense. Are we not to pet each other 
for the future except with a calendar in our hands ? We 
are both a little too young for that. Now your lips, my 
infanta, or I shall get a crick in my neck. ’ 

“ Rosette — ‘N o.’ 

“Myself — ‘A h! you wish to be ravished, my pet; by 
heavens ! you shall be. The thing is feasible, though 
perhaps it has not been done yet.’ 

“ Rosette — ‘ Impertinent man ! ’ 

“ Myself — ‘O bserve, most fair one, that I have paid 
you the compliment of a perhaps; it is very polite on my 
part. But we are wandering from the subject. Bend 


124 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


your head. Come; what is this, my favorite sultana? 
and what a cross face. We wish to kiss a smile and not 
a pout.’ 

Rosette (stooping down to kiss me) — ‘ How would 
you have me laugh ? You say such harsh things to me!’ 

^‘Myself — ^ My intention is to say very tender ones. 
Why do you think that I say harsh things to you ? ’ 

‘‘ Rosette — ‘ I don’t know — but you do.’ 

< ‘ Myself — ‘ You take jokes of no consequence for harsh- 
ness. ’ 

‘^Rosette — ^Of no consequence! You call that of no 
consequence? Everything is of consequence in love. 
Listen, I would rather have you beat me than laugh as 
you are doing.’ 

^‘Myself — ‘You would like to see me weep, then?’ 

“Rosette — ‘You always go from one extreme to the 
other. You are not asked to weep, but to speak reason- 
ably, and to give up this quizzing manner, which suits 
you very badly. ’ 

“Myself — ‘ It is impossible for me to speak reasonably 
and not to quiz; so I am going to beat you, since it is to 
your liking.’ 

“ Rosette — ‘ Do.’ 

“ Myself (giving her a few little slaps on her shoulders) 
— ‘ I would rather cut off my own head than spoil your 
adorable little body, and marble the whiteness of this 
charming back with blue. My goddess, whatever pleas- 
ure a woman may have in being beaten, you shall cer- 
tainly not have it. ’ 

“Rosette — ‘ You love me no longer.’ 

“Myself — ‘That does not follow very directly from 
what precedes; it is about as logical as to say: It is rain- 
ing, so do not give me my umbrella; or: It is cold, open 
the window.’ 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


125 


“ Rosette — ‘ You do not love me, you have never loved 
me.’ 

^‘Myself — ‘Ah! the matter is becoming complicated; 
you love me no longer, and you have never loved me. 
This is tolerably contradictory; how can I leave off doing 
a thing which I have never begun ? You see, little queen, 
that you do not know what you are saying, and that you 
are perfectly absurd.’ 

“ Rosette — ‘ I wished so much to be loved by you that 
I assisted in deluding myself. People easily believe 
what they desire; but now I can quite see that I am de- 
ceived. You were deceived yourself; you took a liking 
for love, and desire for passion. The thing happens 
every day. I bear you no ill-will for it; it did not de- 
pend upon yourself to be in love; I must lay the blame 
on my own lack of charms. I should have been more 
beautiful, more playful, more coquettish; I should have 
tried to mount up to you, O my poet! instead of wishing 
you to come down to me; I was afraid of losing you in 
the clouds, and I dreaded lest your head should steal 
away your heart from me. I impassioned you in my 
love, and I believed when giving up myself wholly to 
you that you would keep something — ’ 

“Myself — ‘Rosette, move back a little; your logic 
moves me, you are like a keen axiom.’ 

“Rosette — ‘If I am in your way, I will get up. Ah! 
heart of rock, drops of water pierce the stone, and my 
tears cannot penetrate you.’ (She weeps.) 

“Myself — ‘ If you weep like that you will certainly turn 
our bed into a bath. A bath ? I should say into an 
ocean. Can you swim. Rosette ? ’ 

“ Rosette — ‘ Villain! ’ 

“Myself — ‘Well!* all at once I am a villain! You 
flatter me. Rosette, I have not the honor, I am a gentle 


126 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


citizen, alas! and have never committed the smallest 
crime; I have done a foolish thing, perhaps, which was to 
love you to distraction; that is all. Would you absolutely 
make me repent of it ? I have loved you, and I love you 
as much as I can. Since I have been your lover, I have 
always walked in your shadow; I have given up all my 
time to you, my days and my nights. I have not used 
lofty phrases with you because I do not like them except 
in writing; but I have given you a thousand proofs of my 
fondness. I will say nothing to you of the most scrupu- 
lous fidelity, for that is of course; I have become seven 
quarters of a pound thinner since you have been my mis- 
tress. What more would j^ou have? Here I am with 
you; I was here yesterday, and I shall be here to-morrow. 
Do people behave in this way with those whom they do 
not love? I do everything that you wish. You say 
‘‘Go,” and I go; “Stay,” and I stay. I am the most 
admirable lover in the world, it seems to me.’ 

“Rosette — ‘That is just what I complain about — the 
most perfect lover in the world, in fact. ’ 

“Myself — ‘What have you to reproach me with?’ 

“Rosette — ‘Nothing, and I would rather have some 
cause of complaint against you.’ 

“Myself — ‘This is a strange quarrel.’ 

“ Rosette — ‘ It is much worse. You did not love me. 
I cannot help it nor can you. What would you have 
done in such a case? Unquestionably I should prefer to 
have some fault to pardon in you. I would scold you; 
you would excuse yourself well or ill, and we should 
make it up.’ 

“Myself — ‘It would be all to your advantage. The 
greater the crime the more splendid would the reparation 
be.’ 

“Rosette — ‘You are quite aware, sir, that I am not 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


127 

yet reduced to employ that expedient, and that if I 
pleased presently, although you do not love me, and we 
are quarreling — ’ 

Myself — ‘Y es, I acknowledge it as purely an effect 
of your clemency. Do please a little; it would be better 
than syllogising at random as we are doing.’ 

“Rosette — ‘Y ou wish to cut short a conversation 
which is inconvenient to you; but, if you please, my fine 
friend, we shall content ourselves with speaking! ’ 

“Myself — ‘I t is an entertainment that does not cost 
much. I assure you that you are wrong; for you are 
wonderfully pretty, and I feel towards you — ’ 

“Rosette — ‘W hat you will express to me another 
time.’ 

“Myself — ‘ Oh come, adorable one, are you a little 
Hyrcanian tigress? You are incomparably cruel to-day! 
are you itching to become a vestal? It would be an 
original caprice. ’ 

“Rosette — ‘W hy not? there have been stranger ones 
than that; but I shall certainly be a vestal for you. 
Learn, sir, that I give myself only to people who love me, 
or by whom I believe myself loved. You do not come 
under either of these two denominations. Allow me to 
rise! ’ 

“Myself — ‘ If you get up, I shall get up as well.’ 

“Rosette — ‘ Let me alone! ’ 

“ Myself — ‘B y heavens, no! ’ 

“Rosette (struggling) — ‘Oh! you will let me go ! ’ 

“Myself — ‘I venture, madame, to assure you of the 
contrary. ’ 

“Rosette (seeing that she is not the stronger) — 
‘Well ! I will stay; you are squeezing my arm with such 
force ! What do you want with me ? ’ 

“ Myself — ‘ I think you know. I should not allow my- 


128 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


self to say what I allow myself to do; I have too much 
respect for you.’ 

^‘Rosette (already finding it impossible to defend her- 
self) — ‘ On condition that you will love me a great deal — 
I surrender.’ 

‘‘Myself — ‘It is rather late to capitulate when the 
enemy is already in the fortress.’ 

“Rosette (throwing her arms around my neck, and 
half fainting) — ‘ Unconditionally — I trust to your gener- 
osity. ’ 

“Myself — ‘You do well.’ 

“ Here, my dear friend, I think it would not be amiss 
to put a line of asterisks, for the rest of the dialogue 
could scarcely be translated except by onomatopoeia. 

^ ^ ^ 5i« 

“The ray of sunshine has had time to make the cir- 
cuit of the room since the beginning of this scene. An 
odor of lime-trees comes in from the garden, sweet and 
penetrating. The weather is the finest that could be 
seen; the sky is as blue as an Englishwoman’s eye. We 
get up, and after breakfasting with great appetite, go for 
a long rural walk. The transparency of the air, the 
splendor of the country, and the joyous aspect of nature 
inspired my soul with enough sentimentality and tender- 
ness to make Rosette acknowledge that after all I had a 
sort of heart like other people. 

“Have you ever remarked how the shade of woods, 
the murmuring of fountains, the singing of birds, smil- 
ing prospects, fragrance of foliage and flowers, all the 
baggage of eclogue and description which we have 
agreed to laugh at, none the less preserves over us, how- 
ever depraved we may be, an occult power which it is 
impossible to resist ? I will confide to you, under the 
seal of the greatest secret, that quite recently I surprised 


mademoisellij: de ma upin 


129 


myself in a state of most countrified emotion towards a 
nightingale that was singing. 

It was in ’s garden; although it was night, the 

sky had a clearness nearly equal to that of the finest day; 
it was so deep and so transparent that the gaze easily 
penetrated to God. It seemed to me that I could see 
the last folds of angels’ robes floating over the pale wind- 
ings of the Milky Way. The moon had risen, but a 
large tree hid her completely; she riddled its dark foliage 
with a million little luminous holes, and hung more 
spangles upon it than had ever the fan of a marchioness. 
Silence, filled with sounds and stifled sighs, was heard 
throughout the garden (this perhaps resembles pathos, 
but it is not my fault); although I saw nothing but the 
blue glimmering of the moon I seemed to be surrounded by 
a population of unknown and worshipped phantoms, and 
I did not feel alone, although there was only myself on 
the terrace. 

I was not thinking, I was not dreaming, I was blended 
with the nature that surrounded me; I felt myself quiver 
with the foliage, glisten with the water, shine with the 
ray, expand with the flower; I was not myself more than 
the trees, the water and the great night-shade. I 
was all of these, and I do not believe that it would be 
possible to be more absent from one’s self than I was at 
that moment. All at once, as though something extra- 
ordinary were going to happen, the leaf was stilled at 
the end of the branch, the water-drop in the fountain re- 
mained suspended in air, and did not complete its fall; 
the silver thread which had set out from the edge of the 
moon stopped on its way — only my heart beat so sonor- 
ously that it seemed to fill all that great space with sound. 
It ceased to beat, and there fell such a silence that you 
might have heard the grass grow, and a word whispered 

Maupin— 8 


130 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 


at a distance of two hundred leagues. Then from the 
little throat of the nightingale which probably was only 
waiting for this moment to begin its song, there burst a 
note so shrill and piercing that I heard it with my heart 
as much as with my ears. The sound spread suddenly 
through the crystalline sky, which was void of noise, and 
formed a harmonious atmosphere, wherein, beating their 
wings, hovered the other notes which followed. 

“I understood perfectly what it said, as though I had 
had the secret of the language of the birds. It was the 
history of the loves which had not been mine that this 
nightingale sang. Never was a history more accurate 
and true. It did not omit the smallest detail or the most 
imperceptible tint. It told me what I had been unable 
to tell myself, and explained to me what I had been un- 
able to understand; it gave me a voice to my dreaming, 
and caused the phantom, mute until then, to reply. I 
knew that I was loved, and the most languishing trilling 
taught me that I should be happy soon. I thought 
that through the quivering song, and beneath the rain of 
notes, I could see the white arms of my beloved stretched 
out towards me in a ray from the moon. She came up 
slowly with the perfume from the heart of a large hun- 
dred-leaved-rose. 

I shall not try to describe her beauty. It was one of 
those things to which words are denied. How speak the 
unspeakable? how paint that which has neither form nor 
color? how mark a voice which is without tone and 
speech? Never had I had so much love in my heart; I 
would have pressed nature to my bosom. I clasped the 
void in my arms as though I had closed them on a 
maiden’s form; I gave kisses to the air that passed across 
my lips; I swam in effluence from my own radiant body. 
Ah! if Rosette had been there! What adorable nonsense 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


131 

would I have uttered! But women never know when to 
arrive opportunely. The nightingale ceased to sing; the 
moon, worn out with sleep, drew her cloud-cap over her 
eyes; and I — I left the garden, for the coldness of the 
night began to overtake me. 

‘‘As I was cold, I very naturally thought I should be 
warmer with Rosette. I entered with my pass-key, for 
every one in the house was slumbering. Rosette herself 
had fallen asleep, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that 
it was over an uncut volume of my latest poems. She 
had both her arms above her head, her mouth smiling 
and partly open, one leg stretched out and the other 
slightly bent in a posture of grace and ease; she looked 
so well that I felt mortal regret at not being more in love 
with her. 

“While gazing upon her, I bethought me that I was 
as stupid as an ostrich. I had what I had desired so 
long, a mistress of my own like my horse and fny sword, 
young, pretty, amorous, and intellectual — with no high 
principled mother, decorous father, intractable aunt, or 
fighting brother; with the unspeakable charm of a hus- 
band duly sealed and nailed in a fine oak coffin lined 
with lead, and the whole covered over with a big block 
of freestone — a mistress as free as mountain air, and 
rich enough to indulge in the most exquisite refine- 
ments and elegancies, and devoid moreover, of all mortal 
ideas, never speaking to you of her virtue while trying a 
new position, nor of her reputation an}^ more than if she 
had never had one; never intimate with women, and 
scorning them all nearly as much as if she were a man, 
making very light of Platonism without any conceal- 
ment, and yet always bringing the heart into play — a 
woman who, had she been placed in a different sphere, 
would undoubtedly have become the most admirable 


132 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


courtesan in the world, and made the glory of the Aspas- 
ias and Imperias grow pale! 

‘‘Then this woman so constituted was mine. I did 
what I would with her; I had the key of her room 
and her drawer; I opened her letters; I had taken 
her own name and given her another. She was my idol, 
my property. Her youth, beauty, love all belonged to 
me, and I used and abused them. I made her go to bed 
during the day and get up at night, if I fook a fancy to 
do so, and she obeyed me simply, without appearing to 
make a sacrifice, and without assuming the little airs of 
a resigned victim. She was attentive, caressing, and, 
monstrous circumstance, scrupulously faithful; that is to 
say that if six months ago, when I was complaining of 
being without a mistress, I had been given even a distant 
glimpse of such happiness, I should have gone mad with 
joy, and sent my hat knocking against the sky in token 
of my rejoicing. Well! now that I have her, this happi- 
ness seems cold to me; I scarcely feel, I do not feel it,- and 
the situation in which I am affects me so little, that I am 
often doubtful whether I have made a change. Were I 
to leave Rosette, I have an intimate conviction, that at 
the end of a month, perhaps before, I should have so 
completely and carefully forgotten her, that I should no 
longer be able to tell whether I had known her or not! 
Would she do as much on her part? I think not. 

“I was reflecting, then, upon all these things, and, 
feeling a sort of repentance, I laid on the fair sleeper’s 
forehead the chastest and most melancholy kiss that ever 
a young man gave a young woman on the stroke of mid- 
night. She moved a little, and the smile on her lips 
became somewhat more decided, but she did not wake. 
She opened her eyes, and, without speaking to me, she 
fastened her mouth to mine, and wound herself about 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


133 


me so well, that I was warmed in less than no time. All 
the lyrism of the evening was turned into prose; but it 
was at least poetical prose. That night was one of the 
fairest sleepless nights that I have ever spent; I can hope 
for such no longer. 

We still have agreeable moments, but it is necessary 
that they should have been led up to, and prepared for, 
by some external circumstance such as I have related, 
and at the beginning I had no need to excite my imagin- 
ation by looking at the moon and listening to the night- 
ingale’s song, in order to have all the pleasure that is 
possible to a man who is not really in love. There are 
no broken threads as yet in our weft, but there are knots 
here and there, and the warp is not nearly so smooth. 

‘‘Rosette, who is still in love, does what she can to 
obviate these inconveniences. Unfortunately, there are 
two things in the world which cannot be commanded — 
love and weariness. On my part, I make superhuman 
efforts to overcome the somnolence which overtakes me 
in spite of myself, and, like country people who fall asleep 
at ten o’clock in town drawing-rooms, I keep my eyes as 
wide open as possible, and lift up my eyelids with my 
fingers! It is of no use, and I assume a conjugal free- 
dom from restraint which is most unpleasing. 

“The dear child, who the other day found herself the 
better for the rural system, brought me yesterday into 
the country. 

“It might be to the purpose, perhaps, to give you a 
little description of the said country, which is rather 
pretty; it might enliven our metaphysics somewhat, and, 
besides, the characters must have a background; the 
figures cannot stand out against a blank, or against that 
vague brown tint with which painters fill the field of their 


canvas. 


134 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


‘^The approaches to it are very picturesque. You 
arrive, by a highway bordered with old trees, at a star, 
the middle of which is marked by a stone obelisk sur- 
mounted by a ball of gilt copper. Five roads form the 
rays; then the ground becomes suddenly hollow. The 
road dips into a rather narrow valley, crosses the little 
stream, that occupies the bottom, by a one-arched bridge, 
and then with great strides reascends the opposite side, 
where stands the little village, the slated steeple of which 
can be seen peeping from among the thatched roofs and 
round-headed apple-trees. The horizon is not very vast, 
for it is bounded on both sides by the crest of the hill, 
but it is cheerful and rests the eye. Beside the bridge 
there is a mill, and a structure of red stones in the shape 
of a tower; the nearly perpetual barking, and the sight 
of some brachs and young bandy-legged turnspits warming 
themselves in the sun before the door, would tell you 
that it is there that the gamekeeper dwells, if the buz- 
zards and martins nailed to the shutters could leave you 
in doubt about it for a moment. 

^‘At this spot there begins an avenue of sorbs, the 
scarlet fruit of which attracts clouds of birds. As people 
do not pass there very often, there is only a white band 
along the middle; all the rest is covered over with a 
short fine moss, and in the double rut traced by the 
wheels of vehicles, little frogs, green as chrysoprase, 
croak and hop. After proceeding for some time you find 
yourself before a gilded and painted iron grating, its 
sides adorned with spiked fences and chevaux-de-f7'ise. 
Then the road turns towards the mansion — which, being 
buried in the verdure like a bird’s nest, cannot as yet be 
seen — without hastening too much, however, and not in- 
frequently turning aside to visit an elegant kiosk or a fine 
prospect, crossing and recrossing the stream by Chinese 
or rustic bridges. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


135 


“Owing to the unevenness of the ground, and the dams 
erected for the service of the mill, the stream has, in 
several places, a fall of from four to five feet, and noth- 
ing can be more pleasant than to hear all these cascades 
prattling close at hand, most frequently without seeing 
them, for the osiers and elders which line the bank form 
an almost impenetrable curtain. But all this portion of 
the park is in a measure only the ante-chamber of the 
other part. A high road passing across this property 
unfortunately cuts it in two, an inconvenience which has 
been remedied in a very ingenious manner. Two great 
embattled walls, full of barbicans and loopholes, in imi- 
tation of a ruined fortress, stand on either side of the 
road; a tower on which hangs gigantic ivy, and which 
flanks the mansion, lets fall on the opposite bastion a 
veritable drawbridge with iron chains, which are lowered 
every morning. 

“You pass through a pointed archway into the interior 
of the donjon, and thence into the second enclosure, 
where the trees, which have not been cut for more than a 
century, are of extraordinary height, with knotty trunks 
swaddled in parasitical plants, and are the finest and 
most singular that I have ever seen. Some have no 
leaves except at the top, where they terminate in broad 
parasols; others taper into plumes. Others, on the con- 
trary, have near the body a large tuft, out of which the 
stripped stem shoots up to heaven like a second tree 
planted in the first; you would think that they formed 
the foreground of an artificial landscape, or the side- 
scenes of a theatrical decoration, so curiously deformed 
are they; while ivy passing from one to the other and 
suffocating them in its embrace, mingles its dark hearts 
with the green leaves and looks like their shadows. 
Nothing in the world could be more picturesque. Tho 


136 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


stream widens at this spot so as to form a little 
lake, and its shallowness allows the beautiful aquatic 
plants, which carpet its bed, to be seen beneath the 
transparent water. These are nymphaceae and lotuses 
floating carelessly in the purest crystal, with the reflec- 
tions of the clouds and of the weeping-willows that lean 
over the bank. The mansion is on the other side, and 
this little skiff, painted apple-green and light red, will 
save you going rather a long round to reach the bridge. 

^‘It is a collection of buildings, constructed at differ- 
ent epochs, with uneven gables, and a crowd of little 
bell-turrets. This pavilion is of brick, with corners of 
stone; the main building is of a rustic order, full of em- 
bossments and vermiculations. This other pavilion is 
quite modern; it has a flat roof, after the Italian fashion, 
with vases and a balustrade of tiles, and a vestibule of 
ticking in the shape of a tent. The windows are all of 
different sizes, and do not correspond; they are of all 
kinds. We find even trefoils and ogives, for the chapel 
is Gothic. Certain portions are latticed, like Chinese 
houses, with trellis-work painted in different colors, 
whereon climb woodbines, jessamines, nasturtiums, and 
Virginian creepers, the long sprays of which enter the 
rooms familiarly, and seem to stretch out a hand to you 
and bid you good morning. 

^Gn spite of this want of regularity, or rather by rea- 
son of it, the appearance of the building is charming. 
It has at least not all been seen at once, you can make a 
choice, and you are always bethinking yourself of sorne- 
thing that had not been noticed. This dwelling, which 
I did not know of, as it is at a distance of twenty leagues, 
pleased me at the very first, and I was most grateful to 
Rosette for having had the triumphant idea of choosing 
such a nest for our loves. 






















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MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


137 


“We arrived there at the close of day; and being 
fatigued, had nothing more urgent, after supping with 
great appetite, than to go to bed — separately, be it un- 
derstood — for we intended to sleep seriously. 

“I was dreaming some rose-colored dream, full of 
flowers, perfumes, and birds, when I felt a warm breath 
on my forehead, and a kiss descending upon it with 
throbbing wings. A delicate noise of lips, and a soft 
moisture on the place that was touched, made me think 
that I was not dreaming. I opened my eyes, and the 
first thing that I saw was the fresh white neck of Rosette, 
who was bending down over the bed to kiss me. I threw 
my arms around her form, and returned her kiss more 
amorously than I had done for a long time. 

“She went away to draw the curtain and open the 
window, then came back and sat down on the edge of my 
bed, holding my hand between both of hers and playing 
with my rings. Her attire was most coquettishly simple. 
She was without corset or petticoat, and had absolutely 
nothing on her but a large dressing-gown of cambric, as 
white as milk, very ample and with broad folds; her hair 
was drawn up on the top of her head with a little white 
rose, of the kind that has only three or four leaves; her 
ivory feet played in slippers worked in brilliant and 
variegated colors, as delicate as possible, though still too 
large, and* with no quarter like those of the young Roman 
ladies. As I looked at her I regretted that I was her 
lover, and had not to become so. 

“The dream that I had at the moment when she came 
to awake me in so agreeable a manner was not very re- 
mote from the reality. My room looked upon the little 
lake that I have just described. My window was framed 
with jessamine, which was shaking itswstars in silver rain 
upon the floor. Large foreign flowers were poising their 


138 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


urns beneath my balcony as though to cense me; a sweet 
and undecided odor, formed of a thousand different per- 
fumes, penetrated to my bed, whence I could see the 
water gleaming and scaling into millions of spangles; the 
birds were jargoning, warbling, chirping, and piping. 
It was a harmonious noise, and confused like the hum of 
a festival. Opposite, on a sunlit hill, stretched a lawn 
of golden green, on which some large oxen, scattered 
here and there, were feeding under the care of a little 
boy. Quite alone, and further away, might be seen im- 
mense squares of forest of a darker green, from which 
the bluish smoke of the charcoal kilns curled spirally 
upwards. 

‘‘Everything in this picture was calm, fresh, and 
smiling, and in whatever direction I turned my eyes, I 
saw nothing that was not fair and young. My room was 
hung in chintz, with mats on the floor; blue Japanese 
pots, with round bodies and tapering necks, and filled 
with singular flowers, were artistically arranged on the 
whatnots and on the dark-blue marble chimneypiece 
which was also filled with flowers; there were frieze- 
panels of gay color and delicate design, representing 
scenes from rural or pastoral nature, and sofas and divans 
in every corner, and then — a beautiful and youthful 
woman all in white, her flesh giving a tender rose tint to 
her transparent dress where it touched it. it would be 
impossible to imagine anything better ordered for the 
gratification alike of soul and eye 

“Thus my contented and careless glance would pass 
with equal pleasure from a magnificent pot strewn with 
dragons and mandarins to Rosette’s slipper, and from 
that to the corner of her shoulder which shone beneath 
the cambric; it would pause at the trembling stars of the 
jessamine and the white tresses of the willows 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


139 


on the bank, cross the water and wander on the hill, 
and then come back into the room, to be fixed on the 
rose-colored bows on the corset of some shepherdess. 

Through the slashes in the foliage the sky was open- 
ing thousands of blue eyes; the water prattled softly, 
and I, plunged in tranquil ecstasy, without speaking, and 
with my hand still between Rosette’s two little ones, 
gave myself up to all this joy. 

^‘Do what we may, happiness is pink and white; it can 
scarcely be represented otherwise. Delicate colors suit 
it as a matter of course. On its palette it has only 
water-green, sky-blue and straw-yellow. Its pictures 
are all bright like those of the Chinese painters. 
Flowers, light, perfumes, a soft and silken skin which 
touches yours, a veiled harmony coming you know not 
whence, with these there is perfect happiness, and there 
is no means of living happy in a different way. For 
myself, I, who have a horror of the common-place, who 
dream but of strange adventures, strong passions, de- 
lirious ecstasies, and odd and difficult situations, I must 
be foolishly happy in the manner I have indicated, and, 
for all my efforts, I have never been able to discover any 
other method of being so. 

‘‘I would have you know that I made none of these 
reflections then; it was after the event and when writing 
to you that they occurred to me; at the moment in ques- 
tion I was occupied only in enjoying — the sole occupa- 
tion of a reasonable man. 

‘‘I will not describe to you the life that we are leading 
here; it may easily be imagined. There are walks in the 
great woods, violets and strawberries, kisses and blue 
flowers, luncheons on the grass, readings and books for- 
gotten beneath the trees; parties on the water with the 
end of a scarf or a white hand dipping in the current, 


140 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


long songs and long laughter repeated by the echo on the 
bank; the most Arcadian life that could be imagined! 

Rosette overwhelms me with caresses and attentions; 
cooing more than a dove in the month of May, she rolls 
herself about me and encircles me in her folds; she strives 
that I may have no other atmosphere than her breath, 
and no other horizon than her eyes; she invests me very 
carefully, and suffers nothing whatever to enter or come 
forth without permission; she has built a little guard- 
house beside my heart, whence she keeps watch over it 
night and day. She says charming things to me; she 
makes me the kindest madrigals; she sits at my feet and 
behaves before me quite like a humble slave before her 
lord and master — behavior which suits me well enough, 
for I like these little submissive ways, and I have an in- 
clination towards oriental despotism. She never does 
the smallest thing without taking my advice, and she 
seems completely to have renounced whim and wish; she 
tries to divine my thought and to anticipate it; she is 
wearisome with wit, tenderness, and kindness; she is 
perfect enough to be thrown out of the window. How 
the devil can I give up so adorable a woman without 
seeming a monster ? It would be enough to discredit my 
heart forever. 

“Oh! how I long to find her in fault, and to discover 
something wrong against her! how impatiently I wait for 
an opportunity for a quarrel! but there is no danger that 
the rogue will furnish me with one! When I speak ab- 
ruptly, and in a harsh tone to her, in order to bring about 
an altercation, she gives me such soft answers, in such 
silvery tones, with such moist eyes, and with such a sad 
and loving mien that I seem to myself something worse 
than a tiger, or else a crocodile at the very least, and, in 
spite of my rage, am obliged to ask her pardon. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


141 

“She literally murders me with love; she puts me to 
the torture, and every day brings the planks, between 
which I am caught, a notch closer. She probably wants 
to drive me into telling her that I detest her, that she 
wearies me to death, and that, if she does not leave me 
at peace, I will cut her face with a horsewhip. By heav- 
ens! she will succeed, and, if she continues to be so 
amiable, the devil take me but it will be before long. 

“In spite of all these fair appearances. Rosette has 
had enough of me as I of her; but as she has committed 
glaring follies on my account, she will not, by a rupture, 
put herself in the wrong in the eyes of the worthy cor- 
poration of womankind. Every great passion pretends 
to be eternal, and it is very convenient to avail one’s-self 
of its advantages without being subjected to its draw- 
backs. Rosette reasons in this manner: ‘ Here is a young 
man who has only a remnant of diking for me, and being 
artless and gentle, he does not dare to show it openly, 
and is at his wit’s end; it is clear that I weary him, but 
he will die with the trouble of it rather than take it upon 
himself to leave me. As he is a sort of poet, he has his 
head full of fine phrases about love and passion, and be- 
lieves himself obliged, as a matter of conscience, to play 
the part of Tristan or an Amadis. Hence, as nothing 
in the world is more intolerable than the caresses of one 
whom you are beginning to love no longer (and to love a 
woman no longer means to hate her violently), I am go- 
ing to lavish them on him sufficiently to give him a fit of 
indigestion, and he will be obliged at any rate to send me 
to all the devils, or else to begin to love me again as he 
did the first day, which he will carefully abstain from do- 
ing.’ 

“ Nothing could be better conceived. Is it not charm- 
ing to act the deserted Ariadne ? People pity you and 


142 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


admire you, and cannot find sufficient imprecations for 
the wretch who has been monstrous enough to forsake so 
adorable a creature. You assume a resigned and mourn- 
ful air, you rest your chin on your hand and your elbow 
on your knee in such a way as to bring out the pretty 
blue veins of your wrist. You wear more streaming hair, 
and for some time adopt dresses of a darker hue. You 
avoid uttering the name of the ungrateful one, but you 
make indirect allusions to it, heaving little admirably 
modulated sighs. 

‘‘A woman so good, so beautiful, so impassioned, 
who has made such great sacrifices, who is absolutely 
free from reproach, a chosen vessel, a pearl of love, a spot- 
less mirror, a drop of milk, a white rose, an ideal essence 
for the perfume of a life — a woman who should have 
been worshipped on bended knees, and who, after her 
death, ought to be cut in small pieces for the purpose of 
relics — to abandon her iniquitously, fraudulently, villain- 
ously! Why, a corsair would not do worse! To give her 
her death-blow! — for she will assuredly die of it! A man 
must have a paving stone in his body instead of a heart 
to behave in such a way. 

“ O men! men! 

I say this to myself; but perhaps it is not true. 

“Excellent hypocrites as woman naturally are, I can 
scarcely believe that they could go so far as this; are not 
Rosette’s demonstrations after all only the accurate 
expression of her feelings towards me? However this 
may be, the continuation of the tete-a-tete is no longer 
possible, and the fair chatelaine has at last just sent off 
invitations to her acquaintances in the neighborhood. 
We are busy making preparations to receive these worthy 
country people. Good-by, dear friend.” 


CHAPTER V 


I was wrong. My wicked heart, being incapable of 
love had given itself this reason that it might deliver itself 
from a weight of gratitude which it could not support. I 
had joyfully seized this idea in order to excuse myself in 
my own eyes. I had clung to it, but nothing in the 
world could have been more untrue. Rosette was not 
playing a part, and if ever a woman was true, it is she. 
Well! I almost bear her ill-will for the sincerity of her 
passion, which is one tie the more, and makes a rupture 
more difficult or less excusable; I would rather have her 
false and fickle. What a singular position is this! You 
wish to go away and you remain; you wish to say, ‘ I 
hate you,’ and you say, ‘I love you;’ your past impels 
you onward and prevents you from returning or stopping. 
You are faithful and you regret it. An indefinable kind 
of shame prevents you from giving yourself up entirely 
to other acqaintances, and makes you compound with 
yourself. You give to one all you can take from the 
other without sacrificing appearances; times and oppor- 
tunities for seeing each other, which once presented 
themselves so naturally, are now to be discovered only 
with difficulty. You begin to remember that you have 
business of importance. 

<^Such a situation full of twitchings is most painful, 


144 


MADEMOISELLE DE AIAUPIN 


but it is not so much so as mine. When it is a new 
friendship that takes you away from the old it is easier 
to get free. Hope smiles sweetly on you from the thres- 
hold of the house that contains your young loves. A 
fairer and more rosier illusion hovers white winged over 
the newly closed tomb of its sister lately dead; another 
blossom more mature and more balmy, on which there 
trembles a heavenly tear, has sprung up suddenly from 
among the withered flower-cups of the old boquet; fair 
azure-tinted vistas open up before you; avenues of yoke- 
elms, discreet and humid, extend to the horizon; there are 
gardens with a few pale statues, or some bank supported 
by an ivy-clad wall, lawns starred with daisies, narrow 
balconies where leaning on your elbow you gaze at the 
moon, shadows intersected with furtive glimmerings, 
drawing-rooms with light subdued by ample curtains; all 
the obscurity and isolation sought by the love which 
dares not show itself. 

“It is like a new youth that comes to you. You 
have, besides, change of place, habit, and people; you 
feel, perhaps, a species of remorse, but the desire that 
hovers and buzzes about your head like a bee in the 
spring-time prevents you from hearkening to its voice; 
the void in your heart is filled, and your memories fade 
beneath new impressions. But in this case it is different; 
I love nobody, and it is only from lassitude and weari- 
ness of myself rather than of her that I wish that I could 
break with Rosette. 

“My old notions which had slumbered for a little 
while, awake more foolish than ever. I am tormented 
as before with the desire of having a mistress, and as be • 
fore, in Rosette’s very arms, I doubt whether I have 
ever had one. I see again the fair lady at her window 
in her park of the time of Louis XIII., and the huntress 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


145 


on her white horse gallops across the avenue in the forest. 
My ideal beauty smiles at me from the height of her 
hammock of clouds, I seem to recognize her voice in the 
song of the birds, or the murmuring of the foliage; I think 
that I am being called in all directions, and that the daugh- 
ters of the air touch my face with the fringe of their invisi- 
ble scarves. As in the times of my perturbations, I imagine 
that if I were to post off on the spot and go somewhere, 
far away and quickly, I should reach a spot where things 
that concern me are taking place and where my destinies 
are being decided. 

I feel that I am being waited for impatiently in some 
corner of the earth, I know not which. A suffering soul 
that cannot come to me calls eagerly for me and dreams of 
me; it is this that causes my disquietude, and renders 
me incapable of remaining where I am; I am drawn vio- 
lently out of my^ element. My nature is not one of those 
that is the centre of others, one of these fixed stars 
around which other lights gravitate; I must wander over 
the plains of the sky like an unruly meteor, until I have 
met with the planet whose satellite I am to be, the 
Saturn on whom I am to place my ring. Oh! when 
will this marriage be accomplished? Until then I can- 
not hope to be in my proper position and at rest, and I 
shall be like the distracted and vacillating compass- 
needle for its pole. 

I have suffered my wings to be caught in this treach- 
erous bird-lime, hoping that I should leave only a feather 
behind, and believing myself able to fly away when I 
should think fit to do so. Nothing could be more diffi- 
cult; I find that I am covered with an inperceptible net 
more difficult to break than that forged by Vulcan, and 
the texture of the meshes is so fine and close that there 
is no aperture admitting of escape. The net, moreover, 

Maupin— 9 


146 MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


is large, and it is possible to move about inside it with 
an appearance of freedom; it can scarcely be perceived, 
save when an attempt is made to break it, but then it re- 
sists and becomes as solid as a wall of brass. 

‘‘How much time have I lost, O my ideal! without 
making the slightest effort to realize thee! How have I 
slothfully abandoned myself to the voluptuousness of a 
night! and how little do I deserve to find thee! 

“ Sometimes I think of forming another connection; but 
I have no one in view. More frequently I propose, if I 
succed in breaking these bonds, never to enter into 
similar ones again; and yet there is nothing to justify 
such a resolution, for this affair has been apparently a 
very happy one, and I have not the least complaint to 
make against Rosette. She has always been good to me; 
her conduct could not have been better. Her fidelty to 
me has been exemplary; she has not occasioned the slight- 
est suspicion. The most vigilant and restless jealousy 
would have found nothing to say against her, and would 
be obliged to fall asleep. A man could have been jeal- 
ous only for things that were past; although it is true 
that in that case he would have had abundant reason to 
be so. But jealousy of this description is a nicety which 
happily is rather rare; the present is quite enough with- 
out going back to search beneath the rubbish of old 
passions for phials of poison and cups of gall. 

“What woman could you love if you thought of all 
this? You knoAv, in a confused way, that a woman has 
had several lovers before you; but you say to yourself — 
so full of tortuous turnings and windings is the pride of 
man! — that you are the first that she has truly loved, and 
that it was owing to a concurrence of fatal circumstances 
that she found herself united to people unworthy of her, 
or perhaps it was the vague longing of a heart which was 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


147 

seeking for its own satisfaction, and which changed be- 
cause it had not found. 

‘‘Perhaps it is impossible to reallyJ.ove any one but a 
virgin — a virgin in body and mind — a frail bud which no 
zephyr has as yet caressed, and the closed bosom of which 
has received neither raindrop nor pearly dew, a chaste 
flower which unfolds its white robe for you alone, a fair 
lily with silver urn wherein no desire has been quenched, 
and which has been gilded only by your sun, rocked only 
by your breath, watered only by your hand. The radi- 
ance of noon is not worth the divine paleness of dawn, 
and all the fervor of a soul that has experience and knowl- 
edge of life yields to the heavenly ignorance of a young 
heart that is waking up to love. Ah! what a bitter and 
shameful thought is it that you are wiping away the 
kisses of another, that there is not, perhaps, a single 
spot on this brow, these lips, this throat, these shoulders, 
on this whole body which is yours now, that has not been 
reddened and marked by strange lips; that these divine 
murmurs coming to the assistance of the tongue, whose 
words have failed, have been heard before; that these 
senses, which are so greatly moved, have not learned 
their ecstasy and their delirium from you, and that deep 
down, far away in the retirement of one of these recesses 
of the soul that are never visited, there watches an inex- 
orable recollection which compares the pleasures of for- 
mer times with the pleasures of to-day! 

‘ ‘Although my natural supineness leads me to prefer high 
roads to unbeaten paths, and a public drinking-fountain 
to a mountain spring, I must absolutely try to love some 
virginal creature as pure as snow, as trembling as the 
sensitive plant, who can only blush, and cast down her 
eyes. Perhaps beneath this limpid flood, into which no 
diver has yet gone down, I may fish up a pearl of the 


148 MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


purest water and fit to be the fellow of Cleopatra’s; but 
to do this I should lose the bond that ties me to Rosette, 
— for it is not probable that I shall realize my wish with 
her — and T do not in truth feel the power to do so. 

‘‘And then, if I must confess it, I have at bottom a 
secret and shameful motive which dares not come forth 
into the light, and which I must nevertheless mention to 
5^ou, seeing that I have promised to hide nothing from 
you, and that a confession to be meritorious must be 
complete — a motive which counts for much amid all this 
uncertainty. If I break with Rosette, some time must 
necessarily elapse before she can be replaced, however 
compliant may be the kind of woman in whom I shall 
seek for her successor, and with her I have made pleas- 
ure a habit which I should find it painful to interrupt. 
It is of course possible to fall back upon sophistries — I 
liked them well enough once, and did not spare them on 
a like emergency — but now they disgust me horribly, and 
give me nausea. Hence they are not to be thought of, 
and I am so enervated by voluptuousness, the poison 
has crept so deeply into my bones, that I cannot endure 
the idea of being one or two months without a woman. 
This is egoism, and of the dirtiest description; but I be- 
lieve that the most virtuous, if they would be frank,' 
might make somewhat analogous confessions. 

“It is in this respect that I am most surely caught, 
and were it not for this reason. Rosette and I would have 
quarrelled irreparably long ago. And then in truth it is 
so mortally wearisome to pay court to a woman that I 
have no heart for it. To begin again to say all the charm- 
ing fooleries that I have said so many times already, to 
re-enact the adorable, to write notes and to reply to them; 
to escort beauties in the evening two leagues from your 
own house; to catch cold in your feet and your head be- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


149 


fore a window while watching for a beloved shadow; to 
calculate on a sofa how many superposed tissues sepa- 
rate you from your goddess; to carry bouquets and fre- 
quent balls only to arrive at my present position — it is 
well worth the trouble! 

^‘It were as good to remain in one’s rut. Why come 
out of it only to fall again into one precisely similar, after 
disquieting one’s-self greatly, and doing one’s-self much 
harm ? If I were in love matters would take their own 
course, and all this would seem delightful to me; but I 
am not, although I have the greatest wish to be so, for 
after all there is only love in the world; and if pleasure, 
which is merely its shadow, has such allurements for us, 
what must the reality be ? In what a flood of unspeak- 
able ecstasy, in what lakes of pure delight must those 
swim whose hearts have been reached by one of its gold- 
tipped arrows, and who burn with the kindly ardor of a 
mutual flame! 

‘‘By Rosette’s side I experienced that dull calm, and 
that kind of lazy comfort which results from the gratifi- 
cation of the senses, but nothing more; and this is not 
enough. Often this voluptuous enervation turns to tor- 
por, and this tranquillity to weariness; and I then fall into 
purposeless absence of mind, and into a kind of dull 
dreaming which fatigues me and wears me out. It is a 
condition that I must get out of at all costs. 

^‘Oh! if I could be like certain of my friends who kiss 
an old glove with intoxication, who are rendered com- 
pletely happy by a pressure of the hand, who would not 
exchange a few paltry flowers, half withered by the per- 
spiration of the ball, for a Sultana’s jewel-box, who cover 
with their tears, and sew into their shirts, just over 
their hearts, a note written in wretched style, and 
stupid enough to have been copied from the ^ Complete 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


150 

Letter Writer/ who worship women with big feet, and 
excuse themselves for doing so on the ground that they 
have a beautiful soul! 

“If I could follow with trembling the last folds of a 
dress, and wait for the opening of a door that I might 
see a dear, white apparition pass into a flood of light; if 
a whispered word made me change color; if I possessed 
the virtue to forego dining that I might arrive the sooner 
at a trysting-place; if I were capable of stabbing a rival 
or fighting a duel with a husband; if, by the special favor 
of heaven, it were given to me to find wit in ugly women, 
and goodness in those who are both ugly and foolish; if 
I could make up my mind to dance a minuet and to listen 
to sonatas played by young persons on harpsichord or 
harp; if my capacity could reach to the height of under- 
standing ombre and reversis; if, in short, I were a man 
and not a poet, I should certainly be much happier than 
I am; I should be less wearied and less wearisome. 

“Only one thing I have ever asked of women — beauty; 
I am very willing to dispense with wit and soul. For 
me a woman who is beautiful has always wit; she has 
the wit to be beautiful, and I know of none that is equal 
to this. It would take many brilliant phrases and spark- 
ling flashes to make up the worth of the lightning from 
a beautiful eye. I prefer a pretty mouth to a pretty word, 
and a well-modelled shoulder to a virtue, even a theolog- 
ical one; I would give fifty souls for a delicate foot, and 
all our poetry and poets for the hand of Jeanne d’ Aragon 
or the brow of the Virgin of Foligno. I worship beauty 
of form above all things; beauty is to me visible divinity, 
palpable happiness, heaven come down upon earth. There 
are certain undulating outlines, delicate lips, curved eye- 
lids, inclinations of the head, and extended ovals which 
ravish me beyond all expression, and engage me for 
whole hours at a time. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


151 

“Beauty, the only thing that cannot be acquired, in- - 
accessible for ever to those who are without it at first; 
ephemeral and fragile flower which grows without being 
sown, pure gift of heaven! O beauty! the most radiant 
diadem wherewith chance could crown a brow — thou art 
admirable and precious like all that is beyond the reach 
of man, like the azure of the firmament, like the gold of the 
star, like the perfume of the seraphic lily! We may ex- 
change a stool for a throne; we may conquer the world, 
and may have done so; but who could refrain from kneel- 
ing before thee, pure personification of the thought of 
God ? 

^ “I ask for nothing but beautyjit is true; but I must 
have it so perfect that I shall probably never find it. 

I^Here and there I have seen, in a few women, portions 
that were admirable accompanied by what was common- 
place, and I have loved them for the choice parts that 
they had, without taking the rest into account ;^it is, how- 
ever, a rather painful task and sorrowful operation to 
suppress half of one’s mistress in this way, and to men- 
tally amputate whatever is ugly or ordinary in her by 
confining one’s gaze to whatever goodness she may pos- 
sess. Beauty is harmony, and a person who is equally' 
ugly throughout is often less disagreeable to look at than 
a woman who is unequally beautiful. No sight gives me 
so much pain as that of an unfinished masterpiece, or of 
beauty which is wanting in something; a spot of oil 
offends less on a coarse drugget than on a rich material. 

“Rosette is not bad; she might pass for being beauti- 
ful, but she is far from realizing my dream; she is a stat- 
ue, several portions of which have been finished to a 
nicety. The rest has not been wrought so clearly out of 
the block; there are some parts indicated with much del- 
icacy and charm, and others in a more slovenly and neg 


152 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


ligent fashion. In the eyes of the vulgar the statue 
appears entirely finished, and its beauty complete; but a 
more attentive observer discovers many places where the 
work is not close enough, and outlines which, to attain 
to the purity that they ought to possess, would need the 
nail of the workman to pass and re-pass many more 
times over them; it is for love to polish this marble and 
complete it, which is as much as to say that it will not 
be I who will finish it. 

‘‘For the rest I do not limit beauty to any particular 
sinuosity of lines. Mien, gesture, walk, breath, color, 
tone, perfume, all that life is enters into the composition 
of my ideal; everything that has fragrance, that sings, 
or that is radiant belongs to it as a matter of course. I 
love rich brocades, splendid stuffs with their ample and 
powerful folds; I love large flowers and scent-boxes, the 
transparency of spring water, the reflecting splendor of 
fine armor, thoroughbred horses and large white dogs 
such as we see in the pictures of Paul Veronese. I am 
a true pagan in this respect, and I in no wise adore gods 
that are badly made. Although I am not at bottom ex- 
actly what is called irreligious, no one is in fact a worse 
Christian than I. 

f“ I do not understand the mortification of matter which 
is the essence of Christianity, I think it a sacrilegious 
act to strike God’s handiwork, and I cannot believe that 
the flesh is bad, since He has Himself formed it with His 
own fingers and in His own image.^ I do not approve 
much of long dark-colored smock-frocks with only a head 
and two hands emerging from them, and pictures in which 
everything is drowned in shadow except a radiant coun- 
tenance. My wish is that the sun should enter every- 
where, and that there should be as much light and as 
little shadow as possible, that there should be sparkling 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


153 


color and curving lines, that nudity should be displayed 
proudly, and that matter should be concealed from none, 
seeing that, equally with mind, it is an everlasting hymn 
to the praise of God. 

‘‘I can perfectly understand the mad enthusiasm of 
the Greeks for beauty; and for my part I see nothing 
absurd in the law which compelled the judges to hear 
the pleadings of the lawyers in a dark place, lest their 
good looks and the gracefulness of their gestures and at- 
titude should prepossess them favorably and incline the 
scale. 

I would buy nothing of an ugly shopwoman; I would 
be more willing to give to beggars whose rags and lean- 
ness were picturesque. There is a little feverish Italian 
as green as a citron, with large black and white eyes 
which are half his face — you would think it was an un- 
framed Murillo or Espagnolet exposed for sale by a sec- 
ond-hand dealer on the pavement; he always has a penny 
more than the others. I would never beat a handsome 
horse or dog, and I should not like to have a friend or a 
servant who had not an agreeable exterior. 

^Gt is real torture to me to see ugly things or ugly 
persons. Architecture in bad taste, a piece of furniture 
of bad shape, prevent me from taking pleasure in a house, 
however, comfortable and attractive it may otherwise be. 
The best wine seems almost sour to me in an ill-turned 
glass, and I confess that I would rather have the most 
Lacedaemonian broth on an enamel by Bernard de 
Palissy than the most delicate game in an earthenware 
plate. Externals have always taken a violent hold on 
me, and that is the reason why I avoid the 
company of old people; it grieves me, and affects me 
disagreeably, because they are wrinkled and deformed, 
though some indeed have a beauty of their own; and a 


154 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


good deal of disgust is mingled with the pity that I feel 
for them. Of all the ruins in the world the ruin of a man 
is assuredly the saddest to contemplate. 

‘‘If I were painter (and I have always regretted that 
I am not), I would people my canvases only with god- 
desses, nymphs, madonnas, cherubs, and cupids. To 
devote one’s brush to the making of portraits, unless they 
be those of beautiful persons, appears to me high treason 
against the art; and, far from wishing to double ugly or 
ignoble faces, and insignificant and vulgar heads, I 
should be more inclined to have them cut off the origi- 
nals. Caligula’s ferocity turned in this direction would 
seem to me almost laudable. 

“The only thing in the world that I have ever wished 
for with any consistency is to be handsome. By hand- 
some, I mean as handsome as Paris or Apollo. To be free 
from deformity, and to have tolerably regular features, 
i. e. to have one’s nose in the middle of one’s face, 
and neither snub nor hooked, eyes neither red nor blood- 
shot, and a mouth becomingly cut, is not to be hand- 
some. At this rate I should be so, and I am as remote 
from the idea that I have formed of manly beauty as if I 
were one of the clock- jacks that strike the hour on the 
bells; I might have a mountain on each shoulder, legs as 
those of a turnspit, and the nose and muzzle of an ape, 
and yet have as close a resemblance to it. 

“I often look at myself in the glass for whole hours, 
with unimaginable fixity and attention to see whether 
some improvement has not taken place in my face; I wait 
for the lines to make a movement and become straighter 
or rounder with more delicacy and purity, for my eyes to 
light up and swim in a more vivacious fluid, for the 
sinuosity that separates my forehead from my nose to be 
filled up, and for my profile thus to assume the stillness 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


155 


and simplicity of the Greek profile, and I am always very 
much surprised that this does not happen. I am always 
hoping that some spring or other I shall lay aside the 
form that I have, as a serpent sheds his old skin. 

‘‘To think that I want so little to be handsome, and 
that I shall never be so! What! half a line, a hundredth 
or a thousandth part of a line more or less in one place 
or another, a little less flesh on this bone, a little more on 
that — a painter or a statuary would have settled the 
affair in half an hour. What mattered it to the atoms 
composing me to crystalize in such or such a way ? How 
did it concern this outline to come out here and to go in 
there, and where was the necessity that I should be as I 
am and not different ? In truth if I had Chance by the 
throat I think I should strangle it. Because it has 
pleased a wretched particle of I know not what to fall I 
know not where, and to coagulate foolishly into the 
clumsy countenance that I display, I am to be un- 
happy for ever! Is fit not the most foolish and miserable 
thing in the world ? How is it that my soul, with her 
eager longing for it, cannot let the poor carrion that she 
keeps upright fall prostrate, aixi go and animate one of 
those statues whose exquisite beauty saddens and ravishes 
her. 

“There are two or three persons whom I would 
assassinate with delight, being careful, however, not to 
bruise or spoil them, if I were in possession of the word 
that would effect the transmigration of souls from one 
body to the other. It has always seemed to me that to 
do what I wish (and what that is I do not know), I had 
need of very great and perfect beauty, and I imagine to 
myself that, if I had it, my life, which is so fettered and 
tormented, would have been left in peace. 

“We see so many beautiful faces in pictures! — why is 


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MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


none of them mine ? — so many charming heads hidden 
beneath the dust and smoke of time in the depths of the 
old galleries! Would it not be better if they left their 
frames and came and expanded on my shoulders ? 
Would Raphael’s reputation suffer very much if one of 
the angels that he makes to fly in swarms in the ultra- 
marine of his canvases, were to give up his mask to me 
for thirty years ? So many of the most beautiful parts of 
his frescoes had peeled off and fallen away from old age! 
No one would heed it. What are these silent beauties, 
upon which common men bestow scarce a heedless 
glance, doing around these walls ? and why has God or 
chance not wit enough to do what a man has accomp- 
lished with a few hairs fitted on a stick as a handle, and 
a few pastes of different colors tempered on a board? 

‘‘My first sensation before one of these marvellous 
heads, whose painted gaze seems to pass through you 
and extend to the infinite, is a shock, and a feeling of 
admiration which is not devoid of terror. My eyes grow 
moist, my heart beats; then, when I become a little more 
accustomed to it, and have penetrated further into the 
secret of its beauty, I make a tacit comparison between 
it and myself; jealousy twists itself at the bottom of my 
soul in more tangled knots than a viper, and I have all 
the trouble in the world to refrain from throwing myself 
upon the canvas and tearing it to pieces, 
f “To be handsome means to have one’s-self so 
^ great a charm that every one smiles on you and wel- 
comes you, that before you have spoken everybody is 
already prepossessed in your favor and disposed to be of 
your opinion; that you have only to pass through a street or 
show yourself on a balcony to create friends or mistresses 
for you in the crowd. To have no need of being amiable 
in order to be loved, to be exempt from all the expend!- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


157 


ture of wit and complaisance to which ugliness compels 
you, and from the thousand moral qualities which are 
necessary to make up for absence of personal beauty; 
— What a splendid and magnificent gift! ^ 

‘^And if one could unite supreme beauty with supreme 
strength, and have the muscles of Hercules beneath the 
skin of Antinous, what more could he wish for ? I am 
sure that with these two things and the soul that I have, 
I should in less than three years be emperor of the 
world! Another thing that I have desired almost as 
much as beauty and strength is the gift of transporting 
myself with the swiftness of thought from one place to 
another. With the beauty of an angel, the strength of a 
tiger and the wings of an eagle, I might begin to find 
that the world is not so badly organized as I at first be- 
• lieved. A beautiful mask to allure and fascinate its prey, 
wings to swoop down upon it and carry it off, and claws 
to rend it; — so long as I have not these I shall be un- 
happy. 

‘^All the passions and tastes that I have had have 
been merely these three longings disguised. I liked 
weapons, horses, and women; weapons to take place of 
the sinews that I lacked; horses to serve me instead of 
wings; women that I might at least possess in somebody 
the beauty that was wanting in myself. I sought in 
preference the most ingeniously murderous weapons, 
and those which inflicted incurable wounds. I never had 
an opportunity of making use of a kris or yataghan; never- 
theless I like to have them about me; I draw them from 
the sheath with a feeling of unspeakable security and 
strength, I fence with them at random with g^eat energy, 
and if I chance to see the reflection of my face in a glass, 
I am astonished at its ferocious expression. 

“As to horses, I so override them that they must die 


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or tell the reason why. If I had not given up riding 
Ferragus he would have been dead long ago, and that 
would have been a pity, for he is a good animal. What 
Arab horse could have legs so ready and so slender as 
my desire ? In women I have sought nothing but the 
exterior, and as those that I have seen up to the present 
are far from answering to the idea that I have formed of 
beauty, I have fallen back on pictures and statues; a re- 
source which is after all pitiful enough when one has 
senses so inflamed as mine. However, there is some- 
thing grand and beautiful in loving a statue, in that the 
love is perfectly disinterested, that you have not to dread 
the satiety or disgust of victory, and that you cannot 
reasonably hope for a second wonder similar to the story 
of Pygmalion. The impossible has always pleased 
me. 

‘Hs it not singular that I who am still in the fairest 
months of adolescence, and who, so far from abusing 
everything, have not even made use of the simplest 
things, have become surfeited to such a degree, that I 
am no longer tickled by what is whimsical or difficult ? 
That satiety follows pleasure is a natural law and easy to 
be understood. That a man who has eaten largely of 
every dish at a banquet should be no longer hungry, and 
should seek to rouse his sluggish palate with the thous- 
and arrows of spices or irritant wines may be most read- 
ily explained; but that a man who has just sat down to 
table and has scarcely tasted the first viands should be 
seized with such superb disgust, be unable to touch with- 
out vomiting any dishes but those possessing extreme 
relish and care only for high-flavored meats, cheeses 
marbled with blue, truffles and wines with the taste of 
flint, is a phenomenon which can only result from a pecu- 
liar organization; it is as though an infant six months old 


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159 


were to find its nurse’s milk insipid and refuse to suck 
anything but brandy. 

am as weary as if I had gone through all the prod- 
igalities of Sardanapalus, and yet my life has been, in 
appearance, tranquil and chaste. It is a mistake to think 
that possession is the only road which leads to satiety. 
It can also be reached by desire, and abstinence is more 
wearing than excess. Desire such as mine fatigues dif- 
ferently from possession. Its glance traverses and pene- 
trates the object which it fain would have, and which is 
radiant above it, more quickly and deeply than if it 
touched it. What more can it be taught by use ? What 
experience can be equal to such constant and impassioned 
contemplation ? 

‘^I have passed through so many things, though I have 
made the circuit of very few, that only the steepest heights 
any longer tempt me. I am attacked by the malady 
which seizes nations and powerful men in their old age — 
the impossible. All that I can do has not the least at- 
traction for me. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, great Romans 
of the Empire, O you who have been so misunderstood, 
and are pursued by the baying of the rhetors’ pack, I 
suffer from your disease and I pity you with all the pity 
that remains to me! I too would build a bridge across 
the sea and pave the waves; I have dreamed of burning 
towns to illuminate my festivals; I have wished to be a 
woman, that I migh become acquainted with fresh sensa- 
tions. 

‘^Thy gilded house, O Nero! is but a miry stable be- 
side the palace that I have raised; my wardrobe is better 
equipped than thine, Heliogabalus, and of very different 
splendor. My circuses are more roaring and more bloody 
than yours, my perfumes more keen and penetrating, my 
slaves more numerous and better made; I, too, have 


i6o 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


yoked naked courtesans to my chariot, and I have trod- 
den upon men with a heel as disdainful as yours. Colos- 
suses of the ancient world, there beats beneath my feeble 
sides a heart as great as yours, and in your place I would 
have done what you did and perhaps more. How many 
Babels have I piled up one upon another to reach the 
sky, slap the stars and spit thence upon creation! Why 
am I not God, since I cannot be man? 

“Oh! I think that a hundred thousand centuries of' 
nothingness will be needed to rest me after these twenty 
years of life. God of heaven, what stone will you roll 
upon me ? into what shadow will you plunge me ? of what 
Lethe will you cause me to drink ? beneath what moun- 
tain will you bury the Titan? Am I destined to breathe 
a volcano from my mouth and make earthquakes when 
turning over? 

“When I think that I was born of a mother so sweet 
and so resigned, whose tastes and habits were so simple, 

I am quite surprised that I did not burst through her 
womb when she was carrying me. How is it that none 
of her calm, pure thoughts passed into my body with the 
blood that she transmitted to me? and why must I be 
the son of her flesh only and not of her spirit ? The dove 
has produced a tiger which would fain have all creation 
a prey to his claws. 

“I lived amid the calmest and chastest surroundings. 
It is difficult to dream of an existence so purely enshrined 
as mine. My years glided away beneath the shadows of 
my mother’s arm-chair, with my little sisters and the 
house-dog. Around me I saw only the worthy, gentle, 
tranquil heads of old servants who had grown gray in our 
service and were in a fashion hereditary, and of grave 
and sententious relatives or friends, clad in black, who 
would place their gloves the one after the other on the 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIJST 


i6i 

brim of their hats; some aunts of a certain age, plump, 
tidy, discreet, with dazzling linen, gray skirts, thread 
mittens, and their hands on their girdles like religious 
persons; furniture severe even to sadness, bare oak wain- 
scoting, leather hangings, the whole forming an interior 
of sober and subdued color, such as is represented by 
certain Flemish masters. 

‘‘The garden was damp and dark; the box which 
marked o’\t the beds, the ivy which covered the walls 
and a few fir-trees with peeled arms were charged with 
the representation of verdure and succeeded rather badly 
in their task; the brick house, with a very lofty roof, 
though roomy and in good condition, had something 
gloomy and drowsy about it. Surely nothing could have 
been more adopted for a separate, austere, and melan- 
choly life than such an abode. It seems impossible that 
children brought up in such a house should not end by be- 
coming priests or nuns. Well! in this atmosphere of 
purity and repose, in this shadow and contemplation, I 
became rotten by degrees, and, without showing any 
signs of it, like a medlar upon straw. In the bosom of 
this worthy, pious, holy family I arrived at a horrible 
degree of depravity. It was not contact with the world 
for I had not seen it; nor the fire of passions, for I was 
chilled by the icy sweat that dozed from those excellent 
walls. The worm has not crawled from the heart of 
another fruit into mine. It had been hatched of itself 
entirely within my own pulp which it had preyed upon 
and furrowed in every direction; without, there was no 
appearance and warning that I was spoled. I had neither 
spot nor worm-hole; but I v/as completely hollow within, 
and there was left to me only a slight, brilliantly-colored 
pellicle which would have been burst by the slightest 
shock. 

Manpin— 10 


i 62 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


^‘Isitnot an inexplicable thing that a child, born of 
virtuous parents, brought up with care and discretion, 
and kept away from everything bad, should be perverted 
of himself to such a degree, and come to be what I am 
now? I am sure that if you went back as far as the 
sixth generation you would not find a single atom among 
my ancestors similar to those of which I am formed. I 
do not belong to my family; I am not a branch of that 
noble trunk, but a poisonous toadstool sprung up amid 
its moss-grown roots some heavy, stormy night; and yet 
no one has ever had more aspirations and soarings after 
the beautiful than I, no one has ever tried more stub- 
bornly to spread his wings; but each attempt has made 
my fall the greater, and I have been lost through what 
ought to have saved me. 

“Solitude is worse for me than society, although I 
wish for the first more than for the second. Everything 
that takes me out of myself is wholesome for me; 
companionship wearies me, but it snatches me away per- 
force from the vain dreaming, whose spiral I ascend and 
descend with bended brow and folded arms. Thus, 
since the tete-a-tete has been broken off, aud there have 
been people here with whom I am obliged to put some 
constraint upon myself, I have been less liable to give 
myself up to my gloomy moods, and have been less tor- 
mented by the inordinate desires jvhich swoop my heart 
like a cloud of vultures as soon as I am unoccupied for a 
moment. 

“There are some rather pretty women, and one or 
two young fellows who are amiable enough and very gay; 
but in all this country swarm I am most charmed by a 
young cavalier who arrived two or three days ago. He 
pleased me from the very first; and I took a fancy to him, 
m.erely on seeing him dismount from his horse. It 





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MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


163 


would be impossible to be more graceful; he is not very 
tall, but he is slender and has a good figure; there is 
something soft and undulating in his walk and gestures 
which is most agreeable; many women might envy him 
with his hands and feet. The only fault that he has is 
that he is too beautiful, and has too delicate features for a 
man. He is provided with a pair of the finest and dark- 
est eyes in the world, which have an indefinable ex- 
pression, and whose gaze it is difficult to sustain; but as 
he is very young and has no appearance of a beard, the 
softness and perfection of the lower part of his face 
tempers somewhat the vivacity of his eagle eyes; his 
brown and lustrous hair flows over his neck in great 
ringlets, and gives a peculiar character to his head. 

‘^Here, then, is at last one of the types of beauty that 
I dreamed of realized and walking before me! What 
pity it is that he is a man, or rather that I am not a wo- 
man! This Adonis, who to his beautiful face unites a 
very lively and far-reaching wit, enjoys the further priv- 
ilege of being able to utter his jests and pleasantries in 
silvery and thrilling tones which it is difficult to hear 
without emotion. He is truly perfect. 

^^He appears to share my taste for beautiful things, 
for his clothes are very rich and refined, his horse very 
frisky and thorough-bred; and, that everything might be 
complete and harmonious, he had a page fourteen or fif- 
teen years old mounted on a pony behind him, fair, rosy, 
as pretty as a seraph, half asleep, and so fatigued with 
his ride, that his master was obliged to lift him off the 
saddle and carry him in his arms to his room. Rosette 
received him very kindly, and I think that she intends to 
make use of him to rouse my jealousy and in this way 
bring out the little flame that sleeps beneath the ashes of 
my extinguished passion. Nevertheless, formidable as 


1 64 MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 


such a rival may be, I am little disposed to be jealous of 
him, and I feel so drawn towards him that I would will- 
ingly enough abandon my love to have his friendship.” 


CHAPTER VI 


At this point, if the gentle reader will permit us, we 
shall for a time leave to his dreams the worthy person- 
age who, up to the present, has monopolized the stage 
and spoken for himself alone, and go back to the ordin- 
ary form of romance, without, however, prohibiting our- 
selves from taking up the dramatic form, if necessary, 
later on, and reserving to ourselves the right of drawing 
further on the species of epistolary confession addressed 
by the said young man to his friend, being persuaded 
that, however penetrating and full of sagacity we may 
be, we must know far less in this matter than he does 
himself. 

:je SK Jjc ^ 

The little page was so worn out that he slept in his mas- 
ter’s arms, his little head all dishevelled, swaying to and fro 
as though he were dead. It was some distance from the 
flight of steps to the room which had been assigned to 
the new arrival, and the servant who showed him the 
way offered to carry the child in his turn; but the young 
cavalier, to whom, moreover, the burden seemed but a 
feather, thanked him and would not relinquish it. He 
laid him down very gently on the couch, taking a thou- 
sand precautions not to awake him; a mother could not 
have done better. When the servant had retired and the 
door was shut, he knelt down in front of him and tried 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UP IN 


1 66 

to draw off his boots; but the little feet, which were 
swelled and painful, rendered the operation somewhat 
difficult, and the pretty sleeper from time to time heaved 
vague and inarticulate sighs like one about to wake; then 
the young cavalier would stop and wait until sleep again 
overpowered him. The boots yielded at last, this was 
the most important; the stockings offered only a slight 
resistance. 

This operation accomplished, the master took both 
the child’s feet and laid them beside each other on the 
velvet of the sofa; they were quite the most adorable pair 
of feet in the world, as small as could be, as white as new 
ivory and a little rosy from the pressure of the boots in 
which they had been imprisoned for seventeen hours — 
feet too small for a woman, and which looked as though 
they had never walked; what was seen of the leg was 
round, plump, smooth, transparent, veiny, and most 
exquisitely delicate; a leg worthy of the foot. 

The young man, who was still on his knees, regarded 
these two little feet with loving and admiring attention; 
he bent down, took the left one and kissed it, then the 
right and kissed it also, and then kisses after kisses he 
went back along the leg as far as the place where the 
cloth began. The page raised his long eyelash a little, 
and cast upon his master a kind and drowsy look in 
which no surprise was apparent. ‘‘My belt is 
uncomfortable,” he said, passing his finger beneath the 
ribbon, and fell asleep again. The master unfastened 
the belt, raised the page’s head with a cushion, and 
touching his feet which, burning as they were before, 
had become rather cold, wrapped them up carefully in 
his cloak, took an easy-chair and sat down as close as 
possible to the sofa. Two hours passed in this way the 
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MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


167 


the shadows of his dreams upon his brow. The only 
noise that was heard in the room was the regular breath- 
ing and the ticktack of the clock. 

It was certainly a very graceful picture. There was a 
means to effect in the contrast of these two kinds of 
beauty that a skilful painter would have turned to good 
account. The master was as beautiful as a woman, the 
page as beautiful as a young girl. The round and rosy 
head, set thus in its hair, looked like a peach beneath its 
leaves; it was as fresh and as velvety, though the fatigue 
of the journey had robbed it of a little of its usual bril- 
liance; the half-opened mouth showed little teeth of milky 
whiteness, and beneath his full and glossy temples a net- 
work of azure veins crossed one another; his eyelashes, 
which were like the golden threads that* are spread round 
the heads of virgins in the missals, reached nearly to, the 
middle of his cheeks; his long and silky hair resembled 
both gold and silver — gold in the shade and silver in the 
light; his neck was at once fat and frail, and had nothing 
of the sex that was indicated by his dress; two or three 
buttons, unfastened to facilitate respiration, allowed a 
lozenge of plump and rounded flesh of wonderful white- 
ness to be seen through the hiatus in a shirt of fine Hol- 
land linen, as well as the beginning of a certain curving 
line difficult of explanation on the bosom of a young boy; 
looking carefully at him it might also have been found 
that his lips were a little too much developed. 

The reader may draw his own conclusions; we are 
offering him mere conjectures. We know as little of the 
matter as he does, but we hope to know more after a 
a time, and we promise to faithfully keep him aware of 
our discoveries. If the reader’s sight is better than ours, 
let his glance penetrate beneath the lace on that shirt and 
decide conscientiously whether the outline is too promi- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


1 68 

nent or not prominent enough; but we warn him that the 
curtains are drawn, and that a twilight scarcely favorable 
for investigations of the kind reigns in the room. 

The cavalier was pale, but of golden paleness full of 
vigor and life; his pupils swam in a blue, crystalline 
humor; his straight and delicate nose imparted wonder- 
ful pride and energy of his profile, and its flesh was so 
fine that at the edge of the outline it suffered the light to 
pierce through; his mouth had, at certain moments, the 
sweetest of smiles, but usually it was arched at the cor- 
ners, inwards rather than outwards, like some of the 
heads we see in the pictures of the old Italian masters; 
and this gave him a little look of adorable disdain, a 
most piquant smorfia^ an air of childish pouting and ill- 
humor, which was very singular and very charming. 

What were the ties uniting master to page and page to 
master? There was assuredly something more between 
them than the affection which may exist between master 
and servant. Were they two friends or two brothers? 
If so, why this disguise? It would at all events have 
been difficult for any one who had witnessed the scene 
that we have just described, to believe that these person- 
ages were in reality only what they appeared to be. 

‘‘The dear angel, how he sleeps! ” said the young man 
in a low voice; “I don’t think that he has ever travelled 
so far in his life. Twenty leagues on horseback, he who 
is so delicate! I am afraid that he will be ill from fatigue. 
But no, it will be nothing; there will be no sign of it to- 
morrow; he will have recovered his beautiful color, and 
be fresher than a rose after rain. How beautiful he is, 
so! If I were not afraid of awaking him, I would eat 
him up with caresses. What an adorable dimple he has 
on his chin! what delicacy and whiteness of skin! Sleep 
well, dear treasure. Ah! I am truly jealous of your 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


169 

mother and I wish that I had made you. He is not ill ? 
No; his breathing is regular, and he does not stir. But 
I think some one knocked — ” 

And indeed two little taps had been given as softly as 
possible on the panel of the door. 

The young man rose, and, fearing that he was mis- 
taken, delayed opening until there should be another 
knock. Two other taps, a little more accentuated, were 
heard again, and a woman’s soft voice said in a very low 
tone: ^Ht is I, Theodore.” 

Theodore opened the door, but with less eagerness 
than is usual with a young man opening to a young wo- 
man with a gentle voice who comes scratching myster- 
iously at his door towards nightfall. The folding door, 
being half-opened, gave passage to whom, think you ? — 
to the mistress of the perplexed D’Albert, the Princess 
Rosette in person, rosier than her name, and her bosom 
as moved as was ever that of a woman entering at even- 
ing the room of a handsome cavalier. 

‘‘Theodore!” said Rosette. 

Theodore raised his finger and laid it on his lips, so 
that he looked like a statue of silence, and, showing her 
the sleeping child, conducted her into the next room. 

“Theodore,” resumed Rosette, who seemed to find 
singular pleasure in repeating the name, and to be seek- 
ing at the same time to collect her ideas. “Theodore,” 
she continued, without releasing the hand which the 
young man had offered to her to lead her to an easy chair, 
“so you have at last come back to us? What have you 
been doing all this time? where have you been? Do 
you know that I have not seen you for six months? Ah! 
Theodore, that is not well; some consideration and some 
pity is due to those who love us, even though we do not 
love them.” 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


170 

Theodore — “What have I been doing? I do not 
know. I have come and gone, slept and waked, wept 
and sung, I have been hungry and thirsty, too hot and 
too cold, I have been weary, I have less money, and six 
months older, I have been living and that is all. And 
you, what have you been doing ? ” 

Rosette — “I have been loving you.” 

Theodore — “You have done nothing else?” 

Rosette — “Absolutely nothing else. I have been 
employing my time badly, have I not?” 

Theodore — “You might have employed it better, my 
poor Rosette; for instance, in loving some one who could 
return your love.” 

Rosette — “I am disinterested in love, as I am in 
everything. I do not lend love on usury; I give it as a 
pure gift.” 

Theodore — “That is a very rare virtue, and one which 
can only spring up in a chosen soul. I have often wished 
to be able to love you, at least in the way that you would 
like; but there is an insurmountable obstacle between us 
which I cannot explain to you. Have you had another 
lover since I left you?” 

Rosette — “I have had one whom I have still.” 

Theodore — “What sort of man is he?” 

Rosette — “A poet.” 

Theodore — “The devil! what kind of poet, and what 
has he written?” 

Rosette — “I do not quite know; a sort of volume that 
nobody is acquainted with, and that I tried to read one 
evening.” 

Theodore — “So you have an unknown poet for your 
lover. That must be curious. Has he, holes at his el- 
bows, dirty linen, and stockings like the screw of a 
press?” 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


171 

Rosette — ‘<No; he dresses pretty well, washes his 
hands, and has no inkspots on the tip of his nose. He 
is a friend of C ’s; I met him at Madame de Thi- 

mine’s house; you know a big woman who acts the child 
and puts on little innocent airs.” 

Theodore — And might one know the name of this 
glorious personage ? ” 

Rosette — “Oh, dear, yes! He is called the Chevalier 
d’ Albert.” 

Theodore — “The Chevalier d’Albert! It seems to me 
that he is the young man who was on the balcony when 
I was dismounting.” 

Rosette — “ Exactly. ” 

Theodore — “And he looked at me with such atten- 
tion.” 

Rosette — “ Himself. ” 

Theodore^ — “He is well enough. And he has not 
caused me to be forgotten?” 

Rosette — “No. You are unfortunately not one of 
those who can be forgotten.” 

Theodore — “He is very fond of you, no doubt?” 

Rosette — “I am not quite sure. There are times 
when you would think that he loved me very much; but 
in reality he does not love me, and is not far from hating 
me, for he bears me ill-will because of his inability to 
love me. He has acted like many others more exper- 
ienced than he; he mistook a keen liking for passion, 
and was quite surprised and disappointed when his de- 
sire was satisfied.” 

Theodore — “And what do you intend to do with this 
said lover, who is not in love?” 

Rosette — “What is done with the old quarters of the 
moon, or with last year’s fashions. He is not strong 
enough to leave me the first, and, although he does not 


172 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


love me in the true sense of the word, he is attached to 
me by a habit of pleasure, and such habits are the most 
difficult to break. If I do not assist him he is capable 
of wearying himself conscientiously with me until the 
day of the last judgment, and even beyond it; for he has 
the germ of every noble quality in him; and the flowers 
of his soul seek only to blossom in the sunshine of ever- 
lasting love. Really, I am sorry that I was not the ray 
for him. Of all my lovers that I did not love, I love him 
the most; and if I were not so good as I am I should not 
give him back his liberty, and should keep him still. I 
shall not do so; I am at this moment finishing with 
him.” 

Theodore — “How long will that last?” 

Rosette — “A fortnight or three weeks, but certainly 
a shorter time than it would have lasted had you not 
come. I know that I shall never be your mistress. For 
this, you say, there is a secret reason to which I would 
submit if you were permitted to reveal it to me. All 
hope must therefore be forbidden me in this respect, and 
yet I cannot make up my mind to be the mistress of an- 
other when you are present; it seems to me that it is a 
profanation, and that I no longer have any right to love 
you.”. 

Theodore — “Keep him for the love of me.” 

RosETTE-^“If it gives you pleasure I will do so. Ah! 
if you could have been mine, how different would my 
life have been! The world has a very false idea of me, 
and I shall pass away without any one suspecting what 
I was — except you, Theodore, who alone have under- 
stood me, and have been cruel to me. I have never de- 
sired anyone but you for my lover, and I have not had 
you. If you had loved me, Theodore! I should have 
been worthy of you. Instead of that I shall leave be- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


173 


hind me (if any one remembers me) the reputation of a 
gay woman, a sort of courtesan who differed from the 
one of the gutter only in rank and fortune. I was born 
with the loftiest inclinations; but nothing corrupts like 
^ not being loved. Many despise me without knowing 
what I must have suffered in order to coihe to be what I 
am. Being sure that I should never belong to him 
whom I preferred above all others, I abandoned my- 
self to the stream, I did not take the trouble to protect 
a body that could not be yours. As to my heart nobody 
has had it, or ever will have it. It is yours, though you 
have broken it; and, unlike most of the women who 
think themselves virtuous, provided that they have not 
passed from one bed into another, though I have prosti- 
tuted my good name I have always been faithful in soul 
and heart to the thought of you. 

have at least made some persons happy, I have 
sent fair illusions dancing round some pillows, I have 
innocently deceived more than one noble heart; I was so 
wretched at being repulsed by you that I was not terrified 
at the idea of subjecting anyone to similar torture. That 
was the only motive for many adventures which have 
been attributed to a pure spirit of libertinism ! I ! liber- 
tinism! O world! If you knew, Theodore, how pro- 
foundly painful it is to feel that you have missed your life, 
and passed your happiness by, to see that everyone is mis- 
taken concerning you and that it is impossible to change 
the opinion that people have of you, that your finest 
qualities are turned into faults, your purest essences into 
black poisons, and that what is bad in you has alone 
transpired; to find the doors always open to your vices 
and always closed to your virtues, and to be unable to 
bring a single lily or rose to good amid so much hemlock 
and aconite! — you do not know this, Theodore.” 


174 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


Theodore — ‘‘Alas! alas! what you say is the his- 
tory of everyone; the best part of us is that which re- 
mains within us, and which we cannot bring forth. It is 
so with poets. Their finest poem is one that they have 
not written; they carry away more poems in their coffins 
than they leave in their libraries.” 

Rosette — “ I shall carry my poem away with me.” 

Theodore — “And I, mine. Who has not made one in 
his lifetime ? who is so happy or so unhappy that he has not 
composed one of his own in his head or his heart ? Exe- 
cutioners perhaps have made some that are moist with 
the tears of the tenderest sensibility, and poets perhaps 
have made some which would have been suitable for 
executioners, so red and monstrous are they.” 

Rosette — “Yes. They might put white roses on my 
tomb. I have had ten lovers — but I am a virgin, and 
shall die one. Many virgins, upon whose tombs there 
falls a perpetual snow of jessamine and orange blossom, 
were vertiable Messalinas.” 

Theodore — “ I know your worth. Rosette.” 

Rosette — “You are the only one in the world who 
has seen what I am; for you have seen me under the 
blow of a very true and deep love, since it is without 
hope; and one who has not seen a woman in love cannot 
tell what she is; it is this that comforts me in my bitter- 
ness.” 

Theodore — “And what does this young man think of 
you who, in the eyes of the world, is at present your 
lover ? ” 

Rosette — “A lover’s thought is a deeper gulf than 
the Bay of Portugal, and it is very difficult to say what 
there is at bottom in a man; you might fasten the sound- 
ing-lead to a cord a hundred thousand fathoms long, and 
reel it off to the end, and it would still run without meet- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAULIN' 


175 


ing anything to stop it. Yet in this case I occasionally 
touched the bottom at places, and the lead has brought 
back sometimes beautiful shells, but oftenest mud with 
fragments of coral mingled together. As to his opinion 
of me it has greatly varied; he began at first where others 
end, he despised me; young people who possess a lively 
imagination are liable to do this. There is always a 
tremendous downfall in the first step that they take, and 
the passage of their chimera into reality cannot be ac- 
complished without a shock. He despised me, and I 
amused him; now he esteems me, and I weary him. 

‘Hn the first days of our union he saw only my vulgar 
side, and I think the certainty of meeting with no resist- 
ance counted for much in his determination. He ap- 
peared extremely eager to have an affair, and I thought 
at first that it was one of those plentitudes of heart 
which seek to overflow one of those vague loves which 
people have in the May-month of youth, and which lead 
them, in the absence of women, to encircle the trunks of 
trees with their arms, and kiss the flowers and grass in 
the meadows. But it was not that; he was only passing 
through me to arrive at something else. I was a road 
for him, and not an end. Beneath the fresh appearance 
of his twenty years, beneath the first dawn of adolescence, 
he concealed profound corruption. He was worm-eaten 
at the core; he was a fruit that contained nothing but 
ashes. In that young and vigorous body there struggled 
a soul as old as Saturn’s — a soul as incurably unhappy 
as ever there existed. 

I confess to you, Theodore, that I was frightened and 
was almost seized with giddiness as I leaned over the 
dark depths of that life. Your griefs and mine are noth- 
ing in comparison with his. Had I loved him more I 
should have killed him. Something that is not of this 


176 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


world nor in this world attracts him, and calls him, and 
will take no denial; he cannot rest by night or by day; 
and, like a heliotrope in a cellar, he twists himself that 
he may turn towards the sun that he does not see. He 
is one of those men whose soul was not dipped comple- 
tely enough in the waters of Lethe before being united 
to his body; from the heaven whence it comes it pre- 
serves recollections of eternal beauty which harass and 
torment it, and it remembers that it once had wings, and 
now has only feet. If I were God, the angel guilty of 
such negligence should be deprived of poetry for two 
eternities. Instead of having to build a castle of bril- 
liantly colored cards to shelter a fair young fantasy for a 
single spring, a tower should have been built more lofty 
than the eight superposed temples of Belus. I was not 
strong enough, I appeared to have not understood him, 
I let him creep on his pinions and seek for a summit 
whence he might spring into the immensity of space. 

‘‘He believes that I have seen nothing of all this be- 
cause I have lent myself to all his caprices without seem- 
ing to suspect their aim. Being unable to cure him, I 
wished, and I hope that this will be taken into account 
some day before God, to give him at least the happiness 
of believing that he had been passionately loved. He 
inspired me with sufficient pity and interest to enable me 
to assume with him tones and manners tender enough to 
delude him. I played my part like a consummate actress; 
I was sportive and melancholy, sensitive and voluptuous; 
I feigned disquiet and jealousy; I shed false tears, and 
called to my lips swarms of affected smiles. I attired 
this puppet of love in the richest stuffs; I made it walk 
in the avenues of my parks; I invited all my birds to 
sing as it passed, and all of my dahlias and daturas to 
salute it by bending their heads; I had it cross my lake 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


177 


on the silvery back of my darling swan; I concealed my- 
self within, and lent it my voice, my wit, my beauty, my 
youth, and gave it so seductive an appearance that the 
reality was not so good as my falsehood. 

When the time comes to shiver this hollow statue I 
shall do it in such a way that he will believe all the wrong 
to be on my side, and will be spared remorse. I shall 
myself give the prick of the pin through which the air 
that fills this baloon will escape. Is this not honorable 
deception ? I have a crystal urn containing a few tears 
which I collected at the moment when they were about 
to fall. They are my jewel-box and diamonds, and I 
shall present them to the angel who comes to take me 
away to God.” 

Theodore — ^^They are the most beautiful that could 
shine on a woman’s neck. The ornaments of a queen 
have less value. For my part I think that the liquid 
poured by Magdalene upon the feet of Christ was made 
up of the former tears of those whom she had comforted, 
and I think, too, that it is with such tears as these that 
the Milky Way is strewn, and not, as was pretended, 
with Juno’s milk. Who will, do for you what you have 
done for him ? ” 

Rosette — ‘‘No one, alas! since you cannot.” 

Theodore — “Ah! dear soul! to think that I cannot! 
But do not lose hope. You are still beautiful, and very 
young. You have many avenues of flowers limes and 
acacias to traverse before you reach the damp road bor- 
dered with box and leafless trees, which leads from the 
porphyry tomb where your beautiful dead years will be 
buried, to the tomb of rough and moss-covered stone into 
which they will hastily thrust the remains of what was 
once you, and the wrinkled, tottering spectres of the 
days of your old age. Much of the mountain of life is 

jMaupin— 11. 


178 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUFLN 


still left for you to climb, and it will be long ere you 
come to the zone of snow. You have only arrived at the 
region of aromatic plants, of limpid cascades wherein 
the iris hangs her tri-colored arch, of beautiful green oaks, 
and scented larches. Mount a little higher, and from 
there, on the wider horizon which will be displayed at 
your feet, you shall perhaps see the bluish smoke rising 
from the roof where sleeps the man who is to love you. 
Life must not be despaired of at the very beginning; vis- 
tas of what we had ceased to look for are opened up thus 
in our destiny. 

^‘Man in his life has often reminded me of a pil- 
grim following the snail-like staircase in a Gothic tower. 
The long granite serpent winds its coils in the darkness, 
each scale being a step. After a few circumvolutions the 
little light that came from the door is extinguished. The 
shadow of the houses that are not passed as yet, prevents 
the air-holes from letting in the sun. The walls are 
black and cozy; it is more like down into a dungeon 
never to come forth again than ascending to the turret 
which from below appeared to you so slender and fine, 
and covered with laces and embroideries as though it 
were setting out for a ball. 

“You hesitate as to whether you ought to go higher, 
this damp darkness weighs so heavily on your brow. 
The staircase makes some further turns and more fre- 
quent lutherns cut out their golden trefoils on the opposite 
wall. You begin to see the indented gables of the 
houses, the sculptures in the entablatures, and the 
whimsical shapes of the chimneys; a few steps more and 
the eye looks down upon the entire town; it is a forest 
of spires, steeples and towers which bristle up in every 
direction, indented, slashed, hollowed, punched and 
allowing the light to appear through their thousand cut- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


179 


tings. The dome and cupolas are rounded like the 
breasts of some giantess or the skulls of Titans. The 
islets of houses and palaces stand in shaded or luminous 
slices. A few steps more and you will be on the plat- 
form; and then, beyond the town walls, you will see the 
verdant cultivation, the blue hills and the white sails on 
the clouded ribbon of the river. 

You are flooded with dazzling light, and the swallows 
pass and repass near you, uttering little joyous cries. 
The distant sound of the city reaches you like a friendly 
murmur, or the buzzing of a hive of bees; all the bells 
strip their necklaces of snorous pearls in the air; the 
winds waft to you the scents from the neighboring forest 
and from the mountain flowers; there is nothing but light, 
harmony and perfume. If your feet had become weary, 
or if you had been seized with discouragement and had 
remained seated on a lower step, or if you had gone 
down again altogether, this sight would have been lost 
to you. 

^‘Sometimes, however, the tower has only a single 
opening in the middle or above. The tower of your life 
is constructed in this way; then there is need of more 
obstinate courage, of perservance armed with nails that 
are more hooked, so as to cling in the shadow to the 
projections of the stones and reach the resplendent tre- 
foil through which the sight may escape over the country; 
or perhaps the loop-holes have been filled up, or the 
making of them has been forgotten, and then it is necessary 
to ascend to the summit; but the higher you mount with- 
out seeing, the more immense seems the horizon, and the 
greater is the pleasure and the surprise.” 

Rosette — Theodore, God grant that I may soon 
come to the place where the window is! I have been 
following the spiral for a long time through the profound- 


i8o MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 

est night; but I am afraid that the opening has been built 
up and that I must climb to the summit; and what if this 
staircase with its countless steps were only to lead to a 
walled-up door or a vault of freestone?” 

Theodore — “Do not say that, Rosette; do not think 
it. What architect would construct a staircase that 
should lead to nothing? Why suppose the gentle 
architect of the world more stupid and improvident than 
an ordinary architect ? God does not mistake, and He 
forgets nothing. It is incredible that He should amuse 
Himself by shutting you up in a long stone tube without 
outlet or opening, in order to play you a trick. Why do 
you think that he should grudge poor ants such as we are 
their wretched happiness of a minute, and the impercept- 
ible grain of millet that falls to them in this broad creation ? 
To do that He should have the ferocity of a tiger or a judge; 
and if we were so displeasing to Him, He would only 
have to tell a comet to turn a little from its path and 
strangle us with a hair of its tail. Why the deuce do 
3 ^ou think that God would divert Himself by threading 
us one by one on a golden pin, as the Emperor Domitian 
used to treat flies ? God is not a portress, or a church 
warden, and although He is old He has not yet fallen 
into childishness. All such petty viciousness is beneath 
Him, and He is not silly enough to try to be witty with 
us and play pranks with us. Courage, Rosette, courage! 
If you are out of breath, stop a little to recover it, and 
then continue your ascent : you have, perhaps, only twenty 
steps to climb in order to reach the embrasure whence 
you will see your happiness. ” 

Rosette — “Never! oh never! and if I come to the sum- 
mit of the tower, it will be only to cast myself from it.” 

Theodore — “Drive away, poor afflicted one, these 
gloomy thoughts which hover like bats around you and 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


i8i 


shed the opaque shadow of their wings upon your brow. 
If you wish me to love 3^ou, be happy, and do not weep.” 
(He draws her gently to him and kisses her on the eyes.) 

Rosette — ^ ^ What a misfortune it is to me to have known 
you! and yet, were it to be done over again, I should still 
wish to have known you. Your severity has been sweeter 
to me than the passion of others; and, although you 
have caused me much suffering, all the pleasure I have 
had has come to me from you; through you I have had 
a glimpse of what I might have been. You have been a 
lightning-flash in my night, and you have lit up many of 
the dark places of my soul; you have opened up vistas in 
my life that are quite new. To you I owe the knowledge 
of love, unhappy love, it is true; but there is a deep and 
melancholy charm in loving without being loved, and it 
is good to remember those who forget us. It is happi- 
ness to love even when you are the only one who loves, 
and many die without having experienced it, and often 
the most to be pitied are not those who love.” 

Theodore — ‘‘They suffer and feel their wounds, but 
at least they live. They hold to something; they have a 
star around which they gravitate, a pole to which they 
eagerly tend. They have something to wish for; they 
say to themselves; ‘ If I arrive there, if I have that I shall 
be happy.’ They have frightful agonies, but when dying 
they can at least say to themselves: ‘ I die for him.’ To 
die thus is to be born again. The really, the only irre- 
parably unhappy ones are those whose foolish embrace 
takes in the whole universe, those who wish for every- 
thing and wish for nothing, and who, if angel or fairy 
were to descend and say to them: ‘Wish for something 
and you shall have it,’ would be embarrassed or mute.” 

Rosette — “If the fairy should come, I know what I 
should ask her.” 


i 82 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


Theodore — ^^You do, Rosette, and in that respect you 
are more fortunate than I, for I do not. Vague desires 
stir within me which blend together, and give birth to 
others which afterwards devour them. My desires are a 
cloud of birds whirling and hovering aimlessly; your de- 
sire is an eagle who has his eyes on the sun, and who is 
prevented by lack of air from rising on his outstretched 
wings. Ah! if I could know what I want; if the idea 
which pursues me would extricate itself clear and precise 
from the fog that envelops it; if the fortunate or fatal star 
would appear in the depths of my sky; if the light which 
I 'am to follow, whether perfidious will-o’-the-wisp or 
hospitable beacon, would come and be radiant in the 
night; if my pillar of fire would go before me, even though 
it were across a desert without manna and without 
springs; if I knew whither I am going, though I were 
only to come to a precipice! I would rather have the 
mad riding of accursed huntsmen through quagmires and 
thickets than this monotonous movement of the feet. To 
live in this way is to follow a calling like that of those 
horses which turn the wheel of some well with bandaged 
eyes, and travel thousands of leagues without seeing 
anything or changing their situation. I have been turn- 
ing for a long time, and the bucket should have quite 
come up.” 

Rosette — “You have many poins of resemblance with 
D’Albert, and when you speak it seems to me sometimes 
as though he were the speaker. I have no doubt that 
when you are further acquainted with him you will be- 
come much attached to him; you cannot fail to suit each 
other. He is harassed as you are by these aimless flights; 
he loves immensely without knowing what, he would as- 
cend to heaven, for the earth appears to him a stool 
scarcely good enough for one of his feet, and he has 
more pride than Lucifer had before his fall.” 


MA DEMOISELLE BE MA VEIN 


183 


Theodore — was at first afraid that he was one of 
those numerous poets who have driven poetry from the 
earth, and one of those stringers of sham pearls who can 
see nothing in the world but the last syllables of words, 
and Who when they have rhymed glade with shade, flame 
with name, and God with trod, conscientiously cross their 
legs and arms and suffer the spheres to complete their 
revolution. ” 

Rosette — “He is not one of those. His verses are 
inferior to him and do not contain him. What he has 
written would give you a very false idea of his own per- 
son; his true poem is himself, and I do not know whether 
he will ever compose another. In the recesses of his 
soul he has a seraglio of beautiful ideas which he sur- 
rounds with a triple wall, and of which he is more jeal- 
ous than was ever sultan of his odalisques. He only 
puts those into his verses which he does not care about 
or which have repulsed him; it is the door through which 
he drives them away, and the world has only those which 
he will keep no longer.” 

Theodore — “I can understand this jealousy and shame. 
In the same way many people do not acknowledge the 
love they had until they have it no longer, nor their mis- 
tresses until they are dead.” 

Rosette — “It is so difficult to alone possess a thing in 
this world! every torch attracts so many butterflies, and 
every treasure so many thieves! I like those silent ones 
who carry their idea into their grave, and will not surren- 
der it to the foul kisses and shameless touches of the 
crowd. I am delighted with the lovers who do not write 
their mistress’ name on any bark, nor confide it to any 
echo, and who, when sleeping, are pursued by the dread 
lest they should utter it in dream. I am one of the num- 
ber; I have never spoken my thought, and none shall 


184 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


know my love — but see, it is nearly eleven o’clock, my 
dear Theodore, and I am preventing you from taking the 
rest that you must need. When I am obliged to leave 
you, I always feel a heaviness of heart, and it seems to 
me the last time that I shall see you. I delay the part- 
ing as much as possible; but one must part at last. Well, 
good-bye, for I am afraid that D’Albert will be looking 
for me; dear friend, good-bye. 

Theodore put his arm about her waist, and led her 
thus to the door; there he stopped following her a long 
time with his gaze; the corridor was pierced at wide in- 
intervals with little narrow-paned windows, which 
were lit up by the moon, and made a very fantastic alter- 
ation of light shade. At each window Rosette’s white, 
pure form shone like a silver phantom; then it would 
vanish to appear with greater brilliance a little further off; 
at last it disappeared altogether. 

Thi^odore, seemingly lost in deep thought, remained 
motionless for a few minutes with folded arms; then he 
passed his hand over his forehead and threw back his 
hair with a movement of his head, re-entered the room, 
and went to bed after kissing the brow of the page who 
was still asleep, 


CHAPTER VII 


As soon as it was light at Rosette’s, D’Albert had him- 
self announced with a promptness that was not usual 
with him. 

^‘Here you are,” said Rosette, ‘^and I should say you are 
early, if you could ever come early. And so, to reward 
you for your gallantry, I grant you my hand to kiss. ” 

And from beneath the lace-trimmed sheet of Flanders 
linen, she drew the prettiest little hand that was ever seen 
at the end of a round, plump arm. 

D’Albert kissed it with compunction. 

And the other one, its little sister, are we not to kiss 
it as well? ” 

^<Oh, dear, yes! nothing more feasible. I am in my 
Sunday humor to-day; here.” And, bringing her other 
hand out of the bed, she tapped him lightly on the mouth. 
‘^Am I not the most accommodating woman in the 
world ? ” 

‘^You are grace itself, and should have white marble 
temples raised to you in myrtle groves. Indeed I am 
much afraid that there will happen to you what happened 
to Psyche, and that Venus will become jealous of you,” 
said D’Albert joining both the hands of the fair one and 
carrying them together to his lips. 

<‘How you deliver all that in a breath! One would 

185 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


186 

say that it was a phrase you had learnt by heart,” said 
Rosette with a delicious little pout. 

‘‘Not at all; you are worthy of having a phrase turned 
expressly for you, and you are made to pluck the virgin- 
ity of madrigals,” retorted D’ Albert. 

“Oh, indeed! really — what makes you so lively to-day? 
Are you ill that you are so polite? I fear that you will 
die. Do you know that it is a bad sign when anyone 
changes his character all at once with no apparent rea- 
son? Now, it is an established fact, in the e3^es of all 
the women who have taken the trouble to love you, that 
you are usually as cross as you can be, and it is no less 
certain that at this moment you are as charming as one 
can be, and are displaying most inexplicable amiability. 
There, I do think that you are looking pale, my poor 
D’Albert; give me your arm, that I may feel your pulse.” 
And she drew up the sleeve and counted the beats with 
comical gravity. “No, you are as well as possible, 
without the slightest symptom of fever. Then I must 
be furiously pretty this morning! Just get me my mir- 
ror, and let me see how far your gallantry is right or 
wrong.” 

D’Albert took up a little mirror that was on the toilet- 
table and laid it on the bed. 

“In point of fact,” said Rosette, “you are not alto- 
gether wrong. Why do you not make a sonnet on my 
eyes, sir poet? You have no reason for not doing so. 
Just see how unfortunate I am! to have eyes like that 
and a poet like this, and yet be in want of sonnets, as 
though I were one-eyed with a water-carrier for my lover! 
You do not love me, sir; you have not even written me 
an acrostic sonnet. And what do you think of my mouth ? 
Yet I have kissed you with that mouth, and shall, per- 
haps, do so again, my handsome gloomy one; and, in- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


187 


deed, it is a favor that you scarcely deserve (this is 
not meant for to-day, for you deserve everything); 
but not to be always talking myself, you have unparal- 
leled beauty and freshness this morning, you look like a 
brother of Aurora; and although it is scarcely light you 
are already dressed and got up as though you were going 
to a ball. Perchance you have designs upon me ? would 
you deal a treacherous blow at my virtue ? do you wish 
to make a conquest of me ? But I forgot that that was 
already, and is now ancient history.” 

Rosette, do not jest in that way; you know very well 
that I love you.” 

‘^Why, that depends. I don’t know very well; and 
you ?” 

Perfectly; and so true is it that if you were so kind 
as to forbid your door to everybody, I should endeavor 
to prove it to you, and, I venture to flatter myself, in a 
victorious fashion.” 

^^As for that, no; however much I may wish to be 
convinced, my door shall remain open; I am too pretty 
to have closed doors; the sun shines for everybody, and 
my beauty should be like the sun to-day, if you have no 
objection.” 

^‘But I have, on my honor; however, act as though I 
thought it excellent. I am your humble slave, and I lay 
my wishes at your feet.” 

^‘That is quite right; continue to have sentiments of 
the kind, and leave the key in your door this evening.” 

‘‘The Chevalier Theodore de S^rannes,” said a big 
negro’s head, smiling and chubby-faced, appearing be- 
tween the leaves of the folding-door, “wishes to pay his 
respect to you and entreats you to condescend to receive 
him.” 

“Ask the chevalier to come in,” said Rosette drawing 
up the sheet to her chin. 


i88 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


Theodore went up to Rosette’s bed and made her a 
most profound and graceful bow, to which she returned 
a friendly nod, and then turned towards D’Albert, and 
saluted him also with a free and courteous air. 

“Where were you?” said Theodore. “I have per- 
haps interrupted an interesting conversation. Pray con- 
tinue, and acquaint me with the subject of it in a few 
words.” 

“Oh, no!” replied Rosette with a mischievous smile; 
“we were talking of business.” 

Theodore sat down at the foot of Rosette’s bed, for 
D’Albert had placed himself beside the pillow; as being 
the first arrival; the conversation wandered for some time 
from subject to subject, and was very witty, very 
gay and very lively, which is the reason why we shall not 
give any account of it; we should be afraid that it would 
lose too much if transcribed. Mien, accent, fire in speech 
and gesture, the thousand ways of pronouncing a word, 
all the spirit of it, like the foam of champagne which 
sparkles and evaporates immediately, are things that it is 
impossible to fix and reproduce. It is a lacuna which we 
leave to be filled up by the reader, and with which he will 
assuredly deal better than we; let him here imagine five 
or six pages filled with everything of the most delicate, 
most.capricious, most curiously fantastical, most elegant 
and most glittering description. 

We are aware that we are here employing an artifice 
which tends to recall that of Timanthes who, despairing 
of his ability to adequately represent Agamemnon’s face, 
threw a drapery over his head; but we would rather be 
timid than imprudent. 

It might perhaps be to the purpose to inquire into the 
motives which had prompted D’Albert to get up so early 
in the morning, and the incentive which had induced him 















MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 189 

to visit Rosette as early as if he had still been in love 
with her. It looked as though it were a slight impulse 
of secret ^nd unacknowledged jealousy. He was cer- 
tainty not much attached to Rosette, and he would even 
have been very glad to get rid of her, but he wished at least 
to give her up himself and not to be given up by her, a 
thing which never fails to wound a man’s pride deeply, 
however well extinguished his first flame may other- 
wise be. 

Theodore was such a handsome cavalier that it was 
difficult to see him appearing in a connection without be- 
ing apprehensive of what had, in fact, often happened 
already, apprehensive, that is, lest all eyes should be 
turned upon him and all hearts follow the eyes; and it 
was a singular thing that, although he had carried off 
many women, no lover had ever maintained towards him 
the lasting resentment which is usually entertained 
towards those who have supplanted you. In all his ways 
there was such a conquering charm, such natural grace, 
and something so sweet and proud, that even men were 
sensible of it. D’Albert, who had come to see Rosette 
with the intention of speaking to Theodore with tartness, 
should he meet him there, was quite surprised to find 
himself free from the slightest impulse of anger in his 
presence, and so ready to receive the advances that were 
made to him. 

At the end of half-an-hour you wouid have thought 
them friends from childhood, and yet D’Albert had an 
intimate conviction that if Rosette was ever to love, it 
would be this man, and he had every reason to be jeal- 
ous at least for the future, for as to the present he 
had as yet no suspicion; what would it have been had he 
seen the fair one in a white dressing-gown gliding like a 
moth on a moon-ray into the handsome youth’s room, and 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAlfPIN 


I go 

not coming out until three or four hours afterwards with 
mysterious precautions ? He might truly have thought 
himself more unfortunate than he was, for one of the 
things that we scarcely ever see is a pretty, amorous 
woman coming out of the chamber of an equally pretty 
cavalier exactly as she went in. 

Rosette listened to Theodore with great attention, and 
in the way that people listen to someone whom they love; 
but what he said was so amusing and varied, that this 
attention seemed only natural and was easy of explana- 
tion. Accordingly D’Albert did not take umbrage at it. 
Theodore’s manner towards Rosette was polished and 
friendly, and nothing more. 

^‘What shall we do to-day, Theodore?” said Rosette; 
“suppose we take a sail? what do you think? or we 
might go hunting? ” 

“Let us go hunting, it is less melancholy than gliding 
over the water side by side with some languid swan, and 
bending the leaves of the water-lillies right and left — is 
that not your opinion, D’Albert?” 

“I might perhaps prefer to flow along in the boat with 
the current of the stream to galloping desperately in pur- 
suit of a poor beast; but I will go where you go. We 
have now only to let Madame Rosette get up, and assume 
a suitable costume.” 

Rosette gave a sign of assent, and rang to have herself 
dressed. The two young men went off arm-in-arm, and 
it was easy to guess, seeing them so friendly together, 
that one was the formal lover and the other the beloved 
lover of the same person. 

Everyone was soon ready. D’Albert and Theodore 
were already mounted in the first court when Rosette 
appeared in riding-habit, on the top of the flight of steps. 
She had a little sprightly and easy air in this costume 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


igi 


which became her very well. She leaped upon the sad- 
dle with her usual agility, and gave a switch to her horse 
which started off like an arrow, D’Albert struck in both 
spurs and soon rejoined her, Theodore allowed them to 
get some way ahead, being sure of catching them up as 
soon as he wished to do so. He seemed to be waiting 
for something, and often looked round towards the man- 
sion. 

‘‘Theodore, Theodore, come on! are you riding a 
wooden horse?” cried Rosette. 

Theodore gave his animal a gallop, and diminished the 
distance separating him from Rosette, without, however, 
causing it to disappear. 

He again looked towards the mansion of which they 
were beginning to lose sight; a little whirlwind of dust, 
in which something that could not yet be discerned was 
in very hasty motion, appeared at the end of the road. 
In a few moments it was at Theodore’s side, and open- 
ing up, like the classic clouds in the Iliad, displayed the 
fresh and rosy face of the mysterious page. 

Theodore come along!” cried Rosette a second time, 
^‘give your tortoise the spur and come up beside us.” 

Theodore gave the rein to his horse which was pawing 
and rearing with impatience, and in a few seconds he 
was several heads in advance of D’Albert and Rosette. 

Whoever loves me will follow me,” said Theodore, 
leaping a fence four feet high. ‘ ‘ Well, sir poet, ” he said, 
when he was on the other side, ^^you do not jump? Yet 
your mount has wings, so people say.” 

Faith! I would rather go round; I have only one 
head to break after all; if I had several I should try,” 
replied D’Albert, smiling. 

. Nobody loves me then, since nobody follows me,” said 
Theodore drawing down the arched corners of his mouth 


192 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUFIN 


even more than usual. The little page raised his large 
blue eyes towards him with a look of reproach, and 
brought his heels against his horse’s sides. 

The horse gave a prodigious bound. 

“Yes! somebody,” he said to him on the other side of 
the fence. 

Rosette cast a singular look upon the child and blushed 
up to her eyes; then, giving a furious stroke with her 
whip on the neck of her mare, she crossed the bar of 
apple-green which fenced the avenue. 

“And I, Theodore, do you think that I do not love 
you? ” 

The child cast a sly side-glance at her, and drew close 
to Theodore. 

D’Albert was already in the middle of the avenue, and 
saw nothing of all this; for, from time immemorial, fath- 
ers, husbands and lovers have been possessed of the 
privilege of seeing nothing. 

“Isnabel,” said Theodore, “you are mad, and so you 
are Rosette! Isnabel, you did not take sufficient room 
for the leap, and you. Rosette, nearly caught your dress 
in the posts. You might have killed yourself.” 

“What matter?” replied Rosette with an accent so 
sad and melancholy, that Isnabel forgave her for having 
leaped the fence as well. 

They went on for some time and reached the cross- 
roads where they were to find huntsmen and pack. Six 
arches cut in the thickness of the forest led to a little 
stone tower with six sides, on each of which was en- 
graved the name of the road that terminated there. The 
trees rose to such a height that it seemed as if they wished to 
card the fleecy, flaky clouds sailing over their heads before 
a somewhat strong breeze; close, high grass and impene- 
trable bushes afforded retreats and fortresses to the game. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


193 


and the hunt promised to be a success. It was a genuine 
old-world forest, with ancient oaks more than a century 
old, such as are to be seen no longer now that we plant 
no more trees, and have not patience enough to wait un- 
til those that are planted have grown up; a hereditary 
forest planted by great-grandfathers for the fathers, and 
by the fathers for the grandsons, with avenues of prodig- 
ious breadth, an obelisk surmounted by a ball, a rock- 
work fountain, the indispensable pond, and the white- 
powdered keepers in yellow leather breeches and sky-blue 
coats; one of those dark, bushy forests wherein stand 
out in admirable relief the white satiny crupper of the 
great horses of Wouvermans, and the broad flags on the 
Dampierre horns, which Parrocelli loves to display ra- 
diant on the huntsmen’s backs. 

A multitude of dog’s tails, like pruning knives or hedge- 
bills were curled friskily in a dusty cloud. The signal 
was given, the dogs, which were straining hard enough 
at the leash to strangle themselves were uncoupled, and 
the hunt began. We shall not describe very minutely 
the turnings and windings of the stag through the forest; 
we do not even know with exactitude whether it was a 
full grown stag, and in spite of all our researches we 
have not been able to ascertain, which is really distress- 
ing. Nevertheless we think that only full grown stags 
could have been found in such a forest, so ancient, so 
shady, and so lordly, and we see no reason why the ani- 
mal after which the four principal characters of this 
illustrious romance were galloping on horses of different 
colors and non passibus aequis, should not have been one. 

The stag ran like the true stag that he was, and the 
fifty dogs at his heels were no ordinary spur to his natural 
swiftness. The run was so quick that only a few rare 
bays were to be heard. 

Maupin— 12 


194 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


Theodore, being the best mounted and the best horse- 
man, followed hard on the pack with incredible eager- 
ness. D’Albert was close behind him. Rosette and the 
little page Isnabel came after, separated by an interval 
which was increasing every minute. 

The interval was soon so great as to take away all hope 
of restoring an equilibrium. 

‘‘Suppose we stop for a little,” said Rosette, “to give 
our horses breath? The hunt is going in the direction 
of the pond, and I know a cross-road which will take us 
there as soon as they.” 

Isnabel drew the bridle of his little mountain horse 
which, shaking the hanging locks of his mane over his 
eyes, bent his head, and began to scrape the sand with 
his hoofs. 

This little horse formed the most perfect contrast with 
Rosette’s; he was as black as night, and the other was 
as white as satin; he was quite shaggy and dishevelled, 
and the other had its mane plaited with blue, and its tail 
curled and crisped. The second looked like a unicorn, 
and the first like a barbet. 

The same antithetical difference was to be remarked 
in the masters as in the steeds. Rosette’s hair was as 
dark as Isnabel’s was fair; her eyebrows were very neatly 
traced and in a very apparent manner; the page’s were 
scarcely more vigorous than his skin and resembled the 
down on a peach. The color of the one was brilliant 
and strong like the light of noon; the complexion of the 
other had the transparencies and blushings of the dawn 
of day. 

“Suppose we try to catch up the hunt now?” said 
Isnabel to Rosette; “the horses have had time to take 
breath.” 

“Come along! ” replied the pretty amazon, and they 













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•v 













MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


195 


started off at a gallop down a rather narrow, transverse 
avenue which led to the pond; the two animals were 
abreast and took up nearly the whole breadth. 

On Isnabel’s side a great branch projected like an arm 
from a twisted and knotted tree, which seemed to be 
shaking its fist at the riders. The child did not see it. 

‘^Take care!” cried Rosettte, ‘^bend down on your 
saddle! you will be unhorsed! ” 

The warning had Reen given too late; the branch 
struck Isnabel in the middle of the body. The violence 
of the blow made him lose his stirrups, and, as his horse 
continued to gallop and the branch was too strong to 
bend, he found himself lifted out of the saddle and fell 
heavily behind. 

The child lay senseless from the blow. Rosette, 
greatly frightened, threw herself from her horse, and 
hastened to the page who sliowed no signs of life. 

His cap had fallen off, and his beautiful fair hair 
streamed on all sides in disorder on the sand. His little 
open hands looked like hands of wax, so pale were they. 
Rosette knelt down beside him and tried to restore him. 
She had neither salts nor flask about her, and her per- 
plexity was great. At last she noticed a tolerably deep 
rut in which the rain-water had collected and become 
clear; she dipped her finger into it, to the great terror of 
a little frog who was the naiad of the sea, and shook a few 
drops upon the bluish temples of the young page. He 
did not appear to feel them, and the water-pearls rolled 
along his white cheeks like a sylphid’s tears along the 
leaf of a lily. Rosette, thinking that his clothes might 
distress him, unfastened his belt, undid the buttons of 
his tightly-fitting coat and opened his shirt that his 
breast might have freer play. 

Rosette there saw something which to a man would 


/ 


196 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


have been one of the most agreeable surprises in the 
world, but which seemed to be very far from giving her 
pleasure — for her eyebrows drew close together, and her 
upper lip trembled slightly — namely, a very white bosom, 
scarcely formed as yet, but which gave admirable prom- 
ise, and was already fulfilling much of it; a round, pol- 
ished ivory bosom — to speak like the Ronsardizers — 
delicious to see, and more delicious to kiss. 

“A woman!” she said, ‘‘a woman! ah! Theodore!” 

Isnabel — for we shall continue to give him this name, 
although it is not his — began to breathe a little, and lan- 
guidly raised his long eyelashes; he had not been 
wounded in any way, but only stunned. He soon sat up, 
and with Rosette’s assistance was able to stand up on 
his feet and remount his horse, which had stopped as 
as soon he had felt that his rider was gone. 

They proceeded at a slow pace as far as the pond, 
where they did in fact meet again with the rest of the 
hunt. Rosette, in a few words , related to Theodore what 
had taken place. The latter changed color several times 
during Rosette’s narration, and kept his horse beside 
Isnabel’s for the remainder of the way. 

They came back very early to the mansion; the day 
which had commenced so joyously ended rather sadly. 

Rosette was pensive, and D’Albert seemed also to be 
plunged in deep thought. The reader will soon know 
what had occasioned this. 


CHAPTER VIII 

^‘No, my dear Silvio, no, I have not forgotten you; I am 
not one of those who pass through life without ever 
throwing a look behind; my past fallows me and in^'^ades 
my present, and almost my future; your friendship is 
one of the sun-lit spots which stand out most clearly on 
the horizon quite blue as it already is of my later years; 
often do I turn to contemplate it, from the summit I have 
reached, with a feeling of unspeakable melancholy. 

‘‘Oh! what a glorious time was that, when we were 
pure as angels! Our feet scarcely touched the ground; 
¥le had as it were wings upon our shoulders, our desires 
swept us away, and in the breeze of springtime there 
tfembled about our brows the golden glory of adoles- 
cence. 

ijj “Do you remember the little island planted with pop- 
lars at that part where the river branches off ? To reach 
it, it was necessary to cross a somewhat long and very 
narrow plank which used to bend strangely in the mid- 
dle; a real bridge for goats, and one, indeed, which was 
scarcely used but by them; it was delicious. Short thick 
grass wherein the forget-me-not blinkingly opened its 
pretty little blue eyes, a path as yellow as nankeen 
which formed a girdle for the island’s green robe and 
clasped its waist, while an ever moving shade of aspens 
and poplars were not the least of the delights of this 

197 


198 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


paradise. There were great pieces of linen which the 
women would come to spread out to bleach in the dew; 
you would have thought them squares of snow; and that 
little girl so brown and sunburnt whose large wild eyes 
shone with such splendor beneath the long locks of her 
hair, and who used to run after the goats threatening 
them and shaking her osier rod when they made as 
though they would walk over the linens that were under 
her care — do you remember her? 

“And the sulphur-colored butterflies with unequal and 
quivering flight, and the king-fisher which we so often 
tried to catch and which had its nest in the alder thicket? 
and those paths down to the river, with their rudely 
hewn steps and their posts and stakes all green below, 
which were nearly always shut in by screens of plants 
and boughs ? How limpid and mirror-like was the water! 
how clearly could we see the bed of golden gravel! and 
what a pleasure it was, seated on the bank, to let the 
tips of our feet dangle in it! The golden-flowered water- 
lilies spreading gracefully upon it looked like green hair 
flowing over the agate back of some bathing nymph. 
The sky looked at itself in this mirror wdth azure smiles 
and most exquisite transparencies of pearl-gray, and at 
all hours of the day there were turquoises, spangles, 
wools and moires in exhaustless variety. How I loved 
those squadrons of little ducks with the emerald necks 
which used to sail incessantly from one bank to the other 
making wrinkles across the pure glass! 

“How well were we suited to be the figures in that 
landscape! how well adapted were we to that sweet calm 
nature, and how readily did we harmonize with it ! Spring 
without, youth within, sun on the grass, smiles on our 
lips, flakes of blossoms on all the bushes, fair illusions 
full-blown in our souls, modest blushes on our cheeks 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


199 


and eglantine, poetry singing in our heart, unseen birds 
warbling in the trees, light, cooings, perfumes, a thous- 
and confused murmurs, the heart beating, the water stir- 
ring a pebble, a grass-blade or a thought upspringing, a 
drop of water flowing along a flower-cup, a tear over- 
flowing along an eyelash, a sigh of love, a rustling of 
leaves * * * * what evenings we spent there walk- 

ing slowly, and so close to the edge that we had often 
one foot in the water and the other on the ground! 

‘‘Alas! this lasted but a short time, with me, at least, 
for you have been able, while acquiring the knowledge 
of the man, to preserve the purity of the child. The 
germ of corruption that was in me has developed very 
quickly, and the gangrene has pitilessly devoured all of 
me that was pure and holy. Nothing good is left to me 
but my friendship for you. 

“1 am accustomed to conceal nothing from you, neither 
actions nor thoughts. The most secret fibers of my heart 
I have laid bare to you; however whimsical, ridiculous 
and eccentric the impulses of my soul may be, I must 
describe them to you; but, in truth, what I have experi- 
enced for some time is so strange, that I scarcely dare to 
acknowledge it to myself. I told you somewhere that I 
feared lest, from seeking the beautiful and disquieting 
myself to attain it, I should at last fall into the impossi- 
ble or monstrous. I have almost come to this; oh, 
when shall I emerge from all these currents which con- 
flict together and draw me to left and right; when 
will the deck of my vessel cease to tremble beneath my 
feet and be swept by the waves of all these storms ? where 
shall I find a harbor where I may cast anchor, and a rock 
immovable and beyond the reach of the billows where I 
may dry myself and wring the foam from my hair. 

You know the eagerness with which I have sought for 


200 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


physicai beauty, the importance that I attach to external 
form, and the love of the visible world that possesses me. 
I cannot be otherwise; I am too corrupted and surfeited 
to believe in moral beauty, and to pursue it with any 
consistency. I have completely lost the knowledge of 
good and evil, and from sheer depravity have almost re- 
turned to the ignorance of the savage or the child. In 
truth, nothing appears to me worthy of praise or blame, 
and the strangest actions astonish me but little. My con- 
science is deaf and dumb. Falsehood appears to me the 
most innocent thing in the world; I deem it quite a simple 
matter that a young girl should become depraved; it seems 
to me that I would betray my friends without the least 
remorse, and that I should not have the slightest scruple 
about kicking people who annoyed me down a precipice 
if I were walking with them along the edge. I would 
look with coolness on the most atrocious sights, and 
there is something in the sufferings and misfortunes of 
humanity that is not displeasing to me. I experience at 
the sight of some calamity falling upon the world the 
same feeling of acrid and bitter voluptuousness that is ex- 
perienced by a man who at last avenges an old affront. 

world, what hast thou done to me that I should 
hate thee thus? Who has filled me so with gall against 
thee? what was I expecting from thee that I should pre- 
serve such rancor against thee for having deceived me ? 
to what lofty hope hast thou been false ? what eaglet 
wings hast thou shorn? What doors wast thou to open 
which have remained closed, and which of us has failed 
in respect of the other ? 

‘‘Nothing touches me, nothing moves me; I no longer 
feel on hearing the recital of heroic deeds, those sublime 
quiverings which at one time would run through me from 
head to foot. All this appears to me somewhat silly. No 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


201 


accent is deep enough to bite the slackened fibers of my 
heart and cause them to vibrate; I see the silly tears of 
my fellow-creatures fall with as indifferent an eye as the 
rain, unless indeed they be of a fine water and the light 
be reflected in them in picturesque fashion and they flow 
over a beautiful cheek. For animals, and for them almost 
alone, I have a feeble residue of pity. I would suffer a 
peasant or a servant to be beaten without mercy, and 
could not patientlyendure to have the same treatment given 
in my presence to a horse or a dog; yet I am not wicked 
— I have never done, and probably shall never do, any 
harm to anybody in the world; but this is rather a result 
of my indifference and the sovereign contempt which I have 
for all persons that do not please me, and which does not 
allow me to be occupied with them even to do them an 
injury. 

“I abhor the whole world in a body, and in the whole 
collection I scarcely deem one or two worthy of a special 
hatred. To hate anyone is to disquiet yourself as much 
about him as though you loved him; to distinguish him, 
isolate him from the crowd; to be in a violent condition 
on account of him; to think of him by day and dream of 
him by night; to bite your pillow and grind your teeth at 
the thought that he exists; what more could you do for 
one you loved ? Would you bestow the same trouble and 
activity on pleasing a mistress as on ruining an enemy? 
I doubt it — in order to really hate anybody, we must love 
another. Every great hatred serves as a counterweight to 
a great love: and whom could I hate, I who love nobody? 

‘‘My hate, like my love, is a confused and general 
feeling, which seeks to fasten upon something and cannot; 
I have a treasure of hate and love within me which I cannot 
turn to account, and which weighs horribly upon me. 
If I can find no means of pouring forth one or other of 


202 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


them, or both, I shall burst, and break asunder like bags 
crammed too full of money which rupture themselves and 
rip their seams. Oh! if I could abhor somebody, if one 
of the stupid people with whom I live could insult me in 
such a way as to make my old viper blood boil in my icy 
veins and rouse me from the dull somnolence wherein I 
stagnate; if thou couldst bite me on the cheek with thy 
rat-like teeth and communicate thy venom and thy rage 
to me, old sorceress with palsied head; if someone’s 
death could be my life; if the last heart’s throb of an 
enemy writhing beneath my foot could impart delicious 
quiverings to my hair, and the odor of his blood become 
sweeter to my parched nostrils than the aroma of flowers, 
oh! how readily would I abandon love, and how happy 
would I esteem myself! 

Mortal embraces, tiger-like bitings, boa entwinings, 
elephant feet pressed on a crackling and flattening breast, 
steeled tail of the scorpion, milky juice of the euphorbia, 
curling kris of Java, blades that glitter in the night and 
are extinguished in blood, you it is that, with me, shall 
take the place of leafless roses, humid kisses and the en- 
twinings of love! 

have said that I love nothing; alas! I am now 
afraid of loving something. It were ten thousand times 
better to hate than so to love! I have found the 
type of beauty that I dreamed of so long. I have dis- 
covered the body of my phantom; I have seen it, it has 
spoken to me, I have touched its hand, it exists; it is not 
a chimera. I well knew that I could not be mistaken, 
and that my presentiments never lied. Yes, Silvio,! am 
by the side of my life’s dream; its room is there and 
mine is here. I can see the trembling of the curtain at 
its window and the light of its lamp. Its shadow has 
just passed across the curtain. In an hour we shall sup 
together. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


203 


<‘The beautiful turkish eyelashes, the deep and limpid 
gaze, the warm color of pale amber, the long and lust- 
rous black hair, the nose finely cut and proud, the joints 
and slender delicate extremities after the manner of 
Parmeginiano, the dainty curves, the purity of oval, 
which gives so much elegance and aristocracy to a face, 
all that I wished for, and that I should have been happy 
to find disseminated in five or six persons, I have found 
united in one! 

‘^What I most adore of all things in the world is a 
pretty hand. If you saw this one! what perfection! what 
vivacious whiteness! what softness of skin! what pene- 
trating moisture! how admirably tapering the extremity 
of the fingers! how clear the oval markings on the nails! 
what polish and what splendor! you would compare them 
to the inner leaves of a rose — the hands of Anne of Aus- 
tria, so vaunted and celebrated, are in comparison but 
those of a turky-herd or of a scullerymaid. And then 
what grace is there and what art in the slightest move 
ments of this hand! how gracefully does this little finger 
curve and keep itself a little apart from its tall brothers! 
The thought of this hand maddens me, and causes my 
lips to quiver and burn. I close my eyes that I may see 
it no longer; but with the tips of its delicate fingers it 
takes my eyelashes and opens the lids and causes a 
thousand visions of ivory and snow to pass before me. 

‘‘Ah! it is Satan’s claw, no doubt, that is gloved be- 
neath this satin skin; — it is some jesting demon who is 
befooling me; — there is some sorcery here. It is too 
monstrously imposssible. 

“This hand — I shall set out for Italy to see the pic- 
tures of the great masters, to study, compare, draw, and 
in short become a painter that I may represent it as it is, 
as I see it, as I feel it; it will perhaps be a means of rid- 
ding myself of this species of possession. 


204 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


I wished for beauty; I knew not what I asked. It is 
to be desirous of looking without eyelids at the sun, to 
be desirous of touching fire. I suffer horribly. To be 
unable to assimilate this perfection, to be unable to pass 
into it and have it pass into me, to have no means of 
representing it and making it felt! When I see some- 
thing beautiful I wish to touch it with the whole of 
myself, everywhere and at the same time. I wish to 
sing it, and paint it, to sculpture it and write it, to be 
loved by it as I love it; I wish what is, and ever will be, 
impossible. 

‘‘Your letter has done me harm, much harm — forgive 
me for saying so. All the calm, pure happiness that 
you enjoy, the walks in the reddening woods, the long 
talks so tender and intimate which end with a chaste kiss 
upon the brow; the separate and serene life; the days so 
quickly spent that the night seems to advance, make me 
find the internal perturbations in which I live more tem- 
pestuous still. So you are to be married in two months; 
all the obstacles are removed, and you are now sure of 
belonging to each other forever. Your present felicity is 
increased by all your future felicity. You are happy and 
you have the certainty of being still happier soon. What 
a lot is yours! Your loved one is beautiful, but what you 
love in her is not lifeless and palpable beauty, material 
beauty, but the beauty that is invisible and eternal, the 
beauty that never grows old, the beauty of the soul. 
She is full of grace and purity; she loves you as such 
souls know how to love. You did not seek to know 
whether the gold of her hair approached in tone the 
tresses of Rubens and Giorgione; but it pleased you be- 
cause it was hers. And I will wager, happy lover that 
you are, that you do not even know whether your mis- 
tress’s type is Greek or Asiatic, English or Italian. O 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


205 


Silvio! how rare are the hearts that are satisfied with love 
pure and simple and desire neither a hermitage in the for- 
ests, nor a garden on an island in Lake Maggiore. 

I had the courage to tear myself from here, I 
would go and spend a month with you; it might be that 
I should be purified in the air that you breathe, and that the 
shadows of your avenues would shed a little freshness on 
my burning brow; but no, it is a paradise wherein I must 
not set my foot. Scarcely should I be permitted to 
gaze from a distance over the wall at the two beauti- 
ful angels walking in it, hand in hand and eye to eye. 
The demon cannot enter into Eden save in the form of a 
serpent, and, dear Adam, for all the happiness in heaven, 
I would not be a serpent to your Eve. 

‘‘What fearful work has been wrought in my soul of 
late ? who has turned my blood and changed it into venom ? 
Monstrous thought, spreading thy pale green branches 
and thy hemlock umbels in the icy shadow of my heart, 
what poisoned wind has lodged there the germ whence 
thou art sprung ? It was this then that was reserved for 
me, it was to this that all the paths, so desperately es- 
sayed, were to lead me! O fate, how thou dost mock us! 
All the eagle-flights towards the sun, the pure flames as- 
piring to heaven, the divine melancholy, the love deep 
and restrained, the religion of beauty, the fancy so curi- 
ous and graceful, the exhaustless and ever-mounting 
flood from the internal spring, the ecstacy ever open- 
winged, the dreaming that bore more blossoms than the 
hawthorn in May, all the poetry of my youth, all these 
gifts so beautiful and rare, were only to succeed in plac- 
ing me beneath the lowest of mankind! 

wished to love. I went like a madman calling and 
invoking love; I writhed with rage beneath the feeling 
of my impotence; I fired my blood, and dragged my body 


2o6 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


to the sloughs of pleasure; I clasped to suffocation against 
my acrid heart a fair young woman who loved me; I pur- 
sued the passion that fled from me. I prostituted my- 
self, and acted like a virgin going into an evil place in 
the hope of finding a lover among those brought there by 
debauchery, instead of waiting patiently in discreet and 
silent shadow until the angel reserved for me by God 
should appear to me with radiant penumbra, a flower 
from heaven ready for my hand. All the years that I have 
wasted in childish disquietude, hastening hither and thith- 
er, and trying to force nature and time, I ought to have 
spent in solicitude and meditation, in striving to render 
myself worthy of being loved; that would have been wisely 
done; but I ^had scales before my eyes and I walked 
straight to the precipice. Already I have one foot, sus- 
pended over the void, and I believe that I shall soon 
raise the other. My resistance is in vain, I feel it, I must 
roll to the bottom of the new abyss which has just opened 
up within me. 

“Yes, it was indeed thus that I had imagined love. I 
now feel that of which I had dreamed. Yes, here is the 
charming and terrible sleeplessness in which the roses 
are thistles and the thistles roses; here is the sweet grief 
and the wretched happiness, the unspeakable trouble 
which surrounds you with a golden cloud, and, like 
drunkenness, causes the shape of objects to waver be- 
fore you, the buzzings in the ear wherein there ever rings 
the last syllable of the well-beloved’s name, the paleness, 
the flushings, the sudden quiverings, the burning and 
icy sweat; it is indeed thus; the poets do not lie. 

^ ‘ When I am about to enter the drawing-room in which 
we usually meet, my heart beats with such violence that 
it might be seen through my dress, and I am obliged to 
restrain it with both hands lest it should escape. If I 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


207 


perceive this form at the end of an avenue or in the 
park, distance is straightway effaced, and the road passes 
away I know not where; the devil must carry it off or I 
must have wings. Nothing can divert my attention from 
it; I read, and the same image comes between the book 
and my eyes; I ride, I gallop, and I still believe that I 
can feel in the whirlwind its long hair mingling with mine, 
and hear its hurried respiration and its warm breath 
passing lightly over my cheek. This image possesses 
and pursues me everywhere, and I never see it more 
than when I see it not. 

‘‘You pitied me for not loving, pity me now for loving, 
and above all for loving whom I love. What a misfor- 
tune, what a hatchet-stroke upon my life that was already 
so mutilated! what senseless, guilty, odious passion has 
laid hold upon me! It is a shame whose blush will never 
fade from my brow. It is the most lamentable of all my 
aberrations, I cannot understand it, I cannot comprehend 
it at all, everything is confused and upset within me; I 
can no longer tell who I am or what others are, I doubt 
whether I am a man or a woman, I have a horror of my- 
self, I experience strange and inexplicable emotions, and 
there are moments when it seems to me as if my reason 
were departing, and when the feeling of my existence 
forsakes me altogether. For a long time I could not be- 
lieve what was; I listened to myself and watched myself 
attentively. I strove to unravel the confused skein that 
was entangled in my soul. At last, through all the veils 
which enveloped it, I discovered the frightful truth. Sil- 
vio, I love — Oh! no, I can never tell you — I love a man.” 


CHAPTER IX 


‘Ht is so. I love a man, Silvio. I long sought to de- 
lude myself; I gave a different name to the feeling that 
I experienced; I clothed it in the garment of pure and 
disinterested friendship; I believed that it was merely 
the admiration which I entertain for all beautiful persons 
and things; for several days I walked in the treacherous, 
pleasant paths that wander about every waking passion; 
but I now recognize the profound and terrible road to 
which I pledged. There is no means of concealment; I 
have examined myself thoroughly, and coldly weighed 
all the circumstances; I have accounted to myself for 
the smallest detail; I have explored my soul in every di- 
rection with the certainty which results from the habit 
of self-investigation; I blush to think and write about it; 
but the fact, alas! is only too certain, I love this young 
man not from friendship but from love — yes, from love. 

“You whom I have loved so much, Silvio, my good, 
my only comrade, you have never inspired me with a 
similar feeling, and yet, if ever there was under heaven 
a close and lively friendship, if ever two souls, though 
different, understood each other perfectly, it was our 
friendship and our two souls. What winged hours have 
we spent together! what talks without end and always 
too soon terminated! how many things have we said to 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


209 


each other which people have never said to themselves! 
We had towards each other in our hearts the windov/ 
which Monus would have liked to open in man’s bosom. 
How proud I was of being your friend, I who was younger 
than you, I so insane, you so full of reason! 

‘‘What I feel towards this young man is truly incred- 
ible; no woman has ever troubled me so singularly. The 
sound of his clear, silvery voice affects my nerves and 
agitates me in a strange manner; my soul hangs on his 
lips, like a bee on a flower, to drink in the honey of 
his words. I cannot brush him as I pass without quiver- 
ing from head to foot, and when, in the evening, as we 
are separating, he gives me his soft, satin-like, adorable 
hand, all my life rushes to the spot that he has touched, 
and an hour afterwards I still feel the pressure of his 
fingers. 

“This morning I gazed at him for a long time without 
his seeing me. I was concealed behind my curtain. He 
was at his window which is exactly opposite to mine. 
This part of the mansion was built at the end of Henri 
IV’s reign; it is half brick, half ashlar, according to the 
custom of the time; the window is long and narrow, with 
a lintel and balcony of stone. Theodore — for you have 
no doubt already guessed that it is he who is in question 
— was resting his elbow on the parapet with a melan- 
choly air, and appeared to be in a profound reverie. A 
drapery of red, large-flowered damask, which was half 
caught up, fell in broad folds behind him and served him 
as a back-ground. How handsome he was, and how 
marvellously his dark and pale head was set off by the 
purple tint! Two great clusters of black, lustrous hair, 
like the grape-bunches of the ancient Erigone, hung 
gracefully down his cheeks, and framed in a most charm- 
ing manner the correct delicate oval of his beautiful 

Maupin— 13 


210 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 


face. His round, plump neck was entirely bare, and he 
had on a dressing-gown with broad sleeves which was 
tolerably like a woman’s dress. In his hand he held a 
yellow tulip, picking it pitilessly to pieces in his reverie 
and throwing the fragments to the wind. 

<‘One of the luminous angles traced by the sun on the 
wall chanced to be projected against the window, and 
the picture was gilded with a warm, transparent tone 
which would have made Giorgione’s most brilliant can- 
vas envious. 

^‘With his long hair stirred softly by the breeze, his 
marble neck thus uncovered, his ample robe clasped 
around his waist, and his beautiful hand issuing from 
their ruffles like the pistils of a flower from the midst of 
their petals, he looked not the handsomest of men but the 
most beautiful of women, and I said in my heart — ^ It is 
a woman, oh! it is a woman! ’ Then I suddenly remem- 
bered the nonsense which, as you know, I wrote to you 
a long time ago, respecting my ideal and the manner in 
which I should assuredly meet with it, the beautiful lady 
in the Louis XIII park, the red and white mansion, the 
large terrace, the avenues of old chesnut trees, and the 
interview at the window; I once gave you all these de- 
tails. It was just so — what I saw was the exact realiza- 
tion of my dream. It was just the style of architecture, 
the effect of light, the description of beauty, the color 
and the character that I had desired — nothing was want- 
ing, only the lady was a man — but I confess to you that 
moment I had completely forgotten this. 

‘‘The^odore must be a woman disguised; the thing 
is impossible otherwise. Such beauty, even for a 
woman, is it not the beauty of a man, were he Antinous, 
the friend of Adrian; were he Alexis the friend of Virgil. 
It is a woman, by heaven, and I was foolish to torment 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


2II 


myself in such a manner. In this way everything is ex- 
plained in the most natural fashion in the world, and I 
am not such a monster as I believed. 

‘‘Would God put those long, dark silken fringes on 
the coarse eyelids of a man ? Would he dye our ugly 
blobber-lipped and hair-bristling mouths with carmine 
so delicate and bright? Our bones, hewn into shape as 
with blows of hedge-bill and coarsely fitted together, are 
not worthy of being swaddled in such white and tender 
flesh; our indented skulls are not made to be bathed in 
floods of such wonderful hair. 

“O beauty! we were created only to love thee and 
worship thee on our knees, if we have found thee, and to 
seek thee eternally through the world, if this happiness 
has not been given to us; but to possess thee, to be thy- 
self, is possible only to angels and to women. Lovers, 
poets, painters, and sculptors, we all seek to raise an 
altar to thee, the lover in his mistress, the poet in his 
song, the painter in his canvas, the sculptor in his marble; 
but it is everlasting despair to be unable to give palpa- 
bility to the beauty that you feel, and to be enshrouded 
in a body which in no way realizes the body which you 
know to be yours. 

“ I once saw a young man who had robbed me of the 
form that I ought to have had. The rascal was just as I 
should have wished to be. He had the beauty of my 
ugliness, and beside him I looked like a rough sketch of 
him. He was of my height, but more slender and vigor- 
ous; his figure resembled mine, but had an elegance and 
nobility that I do not possess. His eyes were not of a 
different color than my own, but they had a look and a 
brilliancy that mine will never have. His nose had been 
cast in the same mould as mine, but it seemed to have 
been retouched by the chisel of his skillful statuary; the 


212 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


nostrils were more open and more impassioned, the flat 
parts more cleanly cut, and there was something heroic 
in it which is altogether wanting to that respectable 
portion of my individuality; you would have said that 
nature had first tried in my person to make this perfected 
self of mine. 

“I looked like the erased and shapeless draught of the 
thought whereof he was the copy in fair, moulded writ- 
ing. When I saw him walk, stop, salute the ladies, sit 
and lie down with the perfect grace which results from 
beauty of proportion, I was seized with sadness and 
frightful jealously, such as must be felt by the clay model 
dr3dng and splitting obscurely in a corner of the studio, 
while the haughty marble statue, which would not 
have existed without it, stands proudly on its sculptured 
socle, and attracts the attention and praises of the 
visitors. For the rogue is, after all, only my own self 
which has succeeded a little better, and been cast with 
less rebellious bronze, that has made its way more 
exactly into the hollows of the mould. I think that he 
has great hardihood to strut in this way with my form 
and to display as much insolence as though he were an 
original type; he is, when all is said, only a plagiarism 
from me, for I was born before him, and without me 
nature would not have conceived the idea of making him 
as he is. 

“When women praised his good manners and per- 
sonal charms, I had every inclination in the world to rise 
and say to them — ‘Fools that you are, just praise me di- 
rectly, for this gentleman is myself and it is uselessly 
circuitous to transmit to him what is destined to come 
back to me.’ At other times I itched horribly to strangle 
him and to turn his soul out of the body which belonged 
to me, and I would prowl about him with compressed 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


213 


lips and clenched fists like a lord prowling around his 
palace in which a family of ragamuffins have established 
itself in his absence, and not knowing how to cast them 
out. For the rest, this young man is stupid, and suc- 
ceeds all the better for it. And sometimes I envy him 
his stupidity more than his beauty. 

‘‘The Gospel saying about the poor in spirit is not 
complete: ‘They shall have the kingdom of Heaven;’ 
I know nothing about that, and it is a matter of indifference 
to me; but they most certainly have the kingdom of the 
earth — they have the money and the beautiful women, in 
other words the only two desirable things in the world. 
Do you know a sensible man who is rich, or a fellow with 
heart and some merit who has a passable mistress? 
Although Theodore is very handsome, I nevertheless 
have not wished for his beauty, and I would rather he 
had it than I. 

“Those strange loves of which the elegies of the 
ancient poets are full, which surprised us so much and 
which we could not understand, are probable, therefore, 
and possible. In the translations that we used to make 
of them we substituted the names of women for those 
which were actually there. Juventius was made to ter- 
minate as Juventia, Alexis was changed into lanthe. 
The beautiful boys became beautiful girls, we thus re- 
constructed the monstrous seraglio of Catullus, Tibullus, 
Martial and the gentle Virgil. It was a very gallant oc- 
cupation which onl}" proved how little we had compre- 
hended the ancient genius. 

“I am a man of the Homeric times; the world in 
which I live is not mine, and I have no comprehension 
of the society that surrounds me. Christ has not come 
for me; I am as much a pagan as were Alcibiades and 
Phidias. I have never gone to pluck passion flowers 


214 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 


upon Golgotha, and the deep river which flows from the 
side of the Crucified One and forms a red girdle round 
the world has not bathed me in its flood. My rebellious 
body will not recognize the supremacy of the soul, and 
my flesh does not admit that it should be mortified. I 
deem the earth as fair as heaven, and I think that cor- 
rectness of form is virtue. Spirituality does not suit 
me, I prefer a statue to a phantom, and noon to twilight. 
Three things please me: gold, marble and purple, splen- 
dor, solidity and color. My dreams are composed of 
them, and all my chimerical palaces are constructed of 
these materials. 

‘‘Sometimes I have other dreams — of long cavalcades 
of perfect white horses, without harness or bridle, ridden 
by beautiful naked youths who defile across a band of 
dark blue color as on the friezes of the Parthenon, or of 
theories of young girls crowned with bandelets^ with 
straight-folded tunics and ivory sistra, who seem to wind 
around an immense vase. Never mist or vapor, never 
anything uncertain or wavering. My sky has no clouds, 
or, if there be any, they are solid chisel-carved clouds, 
formed with the marble fragments fallen from the statue 
of Jupiter. Mountains with sharp-cut ridges indent it 
abruptly on the borders, and the sun, leaning on one of 
the loftiest summits, opens wide his lion-yellow eye with 
its golden lashes. The grasshopper cries and sings, the 
corn-ear cracks; the shadow, vanquished and exhausted 
by the heat, rolls itself up and collects itself at the foot 
of the trees; everything is radiant, shining, resplendent. 
The smallest detail becomes firm and is boldly accentu- 
ated; every object assumes a robust form and color. 
There is no room for the softness and dreaming of Christ- 
ian art. 

“Such a world is mine. The streams in my land- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


215 


scapes fall in a sculptured tide from a sculptured urn; 
through the tall green reeds, sonorous as those of the 
Eurotas, may be seen glistening the round, silvery hip of 
some nymph with glaucous hair. Here is Diana passing 
through this dark oak forest with her quiver at her back, 
her flying scarf, and her buskins with intertwining bands. 
She is followed by her pack and her nymphs with har- 
monious names. My pictures are painted with four tints, 
like the pictures of the primitive painters, and often they 
are only colored basso-relievos; for I love to touch what 
I have seen with my finger and to pursue the roundness 
of the outlines into its most fugitive windings; I view 
each thing from every side and go around it with a light 
in my hand. 

have looked upon love in the light of antiquity and 
as a more or less perfect piece of sculpture. How is 
this arm ? Pretty well. The hands are not wanting in 
delicacy. What do you think of this foot ? I think that 
the ankle is without nobility, and that the heel is com- 
mon-place. But the breast is well placed and of good 
shape, the serpentine line is sufficiently undulating, the 
shoulders are fat and of a handsome character. This 
woman would be a passable model, and it would be 
possible to cast several portions of her. Let us love 
her. 

have always been thus. I look upon women with 
the eyes of a sculptor and not of a lover. I have all my 
life been troubled about the shape of the flagon, never 
about the quality of its contents. I might have had 
Pandora’s box in my hand, and I believe that I should 
not have opened it. Just now I said that Christ had not 
come for me; Mary, star of the modern Heaven, sweet 
mother of the glorious babe, has not come either. 

^^For a long time and very often I have stopped be- 


2i6 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


neath the stone foliage in cathedrals, in the trembling 
brightness from the windows, at an hour when the organ 
was moaning of itself, when an invisible finger touched 
the keys and the wind breathed in the pipes, and I have 
plunged my eyes deep into the pale azure of the long 
eyes of the Madonna. I have followed piously the wasted 
oval of her face, and the scarcely indicated arch of her 
eyebrows; I have admired her smooth and luminous 
brow, her chastely transparent temples, her cheek-bones 
shaded with a sober virginal color, tenderer than the 
blossom of the peach; I have counted one by one the 
beautiful golden lashes casting their palpitating shadow; 
through the half-tint which bathes her I have disting- 
uished the fleeting lines of her frail and modestly bended 
neck; I have even, with rash hand, raised the folds of 
her tunic and contemplated unveiled the virgin, milk-dis- 
tended bosom which was never pressed but by lips div- 
ine; I have pursued its delicate blue veins into their 
most imperceptible ramifications, I have laid my finger 
upon it that I might cause the celestial drink to spring 
forth in white streams; I have touched with my mouth 
the bud of the mystic rose. 

“Well! I confess that this immaterial beauty, so winged 
and vaporous that one feels that it is about to take its 
flight, has affected me very moderately. I prefer the 
Venus Anadyomene a thousand times. The antique eyes 
turned up at the corners, the lips so pure and so firmly 
cut, so amorous and so inviting for a kiss, the low, full 
'brow, the hair undulating like the sea and knotted care- 
lessly behind the head, the firm and lustrous shoulders, 
the back with its thousand charming curves, the small 
and gently swelling bosom, all the well-rounded shapes, 
the breadth of hips, the delicate strength, the expression 
of superhuman vigor in a body so adorably feminine, 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


217 


ravish and enchant me to a degree of which you can 
form no idea, you who are a Christian and discreet. 

‘^Mary, in spite of the humble air which she effects, 
is far too proud for me; scarcely does even the tip of her 
foot, in its encircling white bandelets, touch the surface 
of the globe which is already growing blue and on which 
the old serpent is writhing. Her eyes are the most beau- 
tiful in the world, but they are always turned towards 
heaven or cast down; they never look you in the face 
and have never reflected a human form. And then, I do 
not like the nimbuses of smiling cherubs which circle 
her head in a golden vapor. I am jealous of the tall 
pubescent angels with floating robes and hair who are so 
amorously eager in their assumptions; the hands en- 
twined to support her, the wings in motion to fan her, 
displease and annoy me. These heavenly coxcombs, so 
coquettish and triumphant, with their tunics of light, 
their perukes of golden thread, and their handsome blue 
and green feathers, seem too gallant to me, and if I were 
God I should take care not to give such pages to my 
mistress. 

Venus emerges from the sea to land upon the world 
— as is fitting in a divinity that loves men — quite naked 
and quite alone. She prefers the earth to Olympus, and 
has more men than gods for her lovers; she does not en- 
wrap herself in the languorous veils of mysticism; she 
stands erect, her dolphin behind her, her foot on her 
couch of mother pearl; the sun strikes upon her polished 
body, and with her white hand she holds up in the air 
the flood of' her beautiful hair on which old Father Ocean 
has strewn his most perfect pearls. You may look at 
her; she conceals nothing, for modesty was made for the 
ugly alone, and is a modern invention, daughter of th© 
Christian contempt for form and matter* 


2i8 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


ancient world! so all that thou hast reverted is 
scorned; so thy idols are overthrown in the dust; 
wasted anchorites, clad in rags that are full of holes, 
and blood-covered martys, with shoulders torn by the 
tigers in thy circuses, have perched themselves upon 
the pedestals of thy beautiful, charming gods; Christ 
has wrapped the world in his shroud. Beauty must 
blush at itself and assume a winding sheet. Beautiful 
youths with oil-rubbed limbs who wrestle in lyceum or 
gymnasium, beneath the brilliant sky, in the full light of 
the Attic sun, before the astonished crowd; young Spar- 
tan girls who dance the bibasis, and run naked to the 
summit of Taygetus, resume your tunics and your chla- 
mydes; your reign is past. And you, shapers of marble, 
Prometheuses of bronze, break your chisels; there are 
to be no more sculptors. The palpable world is dead. 
A dark and lugubrious thought alone fills the immensity 
of the void. Cleomene goes to the weavers to see what 
folds are made by cloth or linen. 

‘‘Virginity, bitter plant, born on a soil steeped with 
blood, whose etiolated and sickly flower opens painfully 
in the dark shade of cloisters, beneath a cold and lustral 
rain — scentless rose all bristling with thorns, thou hast 
taken the place, with us, of the beautiful, joyous roses 
bathed in spikenard and Falernian of the dancing women 
of Sybaris! 

“The ancient world did not know thee, fruitless flower; 
never didst thou enter into its wreaths of intoxicating 
fragrance; in that vigorous and healthy society thou 
wouldst have been trampled scornfully underfoot. Vir- 
ginity, mysticism melancholy — three unknown words — 
three new maladies brought in by Christ. Pale spectres 
who flood our world with 3mur icy tears and who, with 
your elbow on a cloud and your hand in your bosom, can 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


219 


only say — ‘O death! O death!’ you could not have set 
foot in that world so well peopled with indulgent and 
wanton gods! 

“ I consider woman, after the manner of the ancients, 
as a beautiful slave designed for our pleasure. Christi- 
anity has not rehabilitated her in my eyes. To me she 
is still something dissimilar and inferior that we worship 
and play with, a toy which is more intelligent than if it 
were of ivory or gold, and which gets up of itself if we 
let it fall. I have been told, in consequence of this, that 
I think badly of women; I consider, on the contrary, that 
it is thinking very well of them. 

I do not know, in truth, why women are so anxious 
to be regarded as men. I can understand a person wish- 
ing to be a boa, a lion or an elephant; but that anyone 
should wish to be a man is something quite beyond my 
comprehension. If I had been at the Council of Trent 
when they discussed the important question of whether 
a woman is a man, I should certainly have given my 
opinion in the negative. 

I have written some love-verses during my lifetime, 
or, at least, some which assumed to pass for such. I 
have just read a portion of them again. They are alto- 
gether wanting in the sentiment of modern love. If they 
were written in Latin distichs instead of in French rhymes, 
they might be taken for the work of a bad poet of the 
time of Augustus. And I am astonished that the women, 
for whom they were written, were not seriously angry, 
instead of being quite charmed with them. It is true 
that women know as little about poetry as cabbages and 
roses, which is quite natural and plain, being themselves 
poetry, or, at least, the best instruments for poetry; the 
flute does not hear nor understand the air that is played 
upon it. 


220 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


“In these verses nothing is spoken of but golden or 
ebony hair, marvellous delicacy of skin, roundness of 
arm, smallness of foot, and shapely daintiness of hand, 
and the whole terminates with a humble supplication to 
the divinity to grant the enjoyment of all these beautiful 
things as speedily as possible. In the triumphant pass- 
ages there is nothing but garlands hung upon the thresh- 
old, torrents of flowers, burning perfumes, Catullian ad- 
dition of kisses, sleepless and charming nights, quarrels 
with Aurora, and injunctions to the same Aurora to re- 
turn and hide herself behind the saffron curtains of old 
Tithonus — brightness without heat, sonorousness with- 
out vibration. They are accurate, polished, written with 
consistent elaboration; but through all the refinements 
and veils of expression you may divine the short, stern 
voice of the master trying to be mild while speaking to 
the slave. There is no soul, as in the erotic poetry writ- 
ten since the Christian era, asking another soul to love it 
because it loves; there is no azure-tinted, smiling lake 
inviting a brook to pour itself into its bosom that they 
may reflect the stars of heaven together; there is no pair 
of doves spreading their wings at the same time to fly to 
the same nest. 

“Cynthia, you are beautiful; make haste; make haste. 
Who knows whether you will be alive to-morrow ? Your 
hair is blacker than the lustrous skin of an Ethiopian 
virgin. Make haste; a few years hence, slender silver 
threads will creep into its thick clusters; these roses 
smell sweet to-day, but to-morrow they will have the 
odor of death, and be but the corpses of roses. Let us 
inhale thy roses while they resemble thy cheeks; let us 
kiss thy cheeks while they resemble thy roses. When 
you are old, Cynthia, no one will have anything more to 
do with you — not even the lictor’s servants when you 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLJST 


221 


would pay them — and you will run after me whom now 
you repulse. Wait until Saturn with his nail has 
scratched this pure and shining brow, and you will see 
how your threshold, so besieged, so entreated, so warm 
with tears and so decked with flowers, will be shunned, 
and cursed, and covered with weeds and briars. Make 
haste, Cynthia; the smallest wrinkle may serve as a 
grave for the greatest love. 

“Such is the brutal and imperious formula in which 
ancient elegy is contained; it always comes back to it; it 
is its greatest, its strongest reason, the Achilles of its 
arguments. After this it has scarcely anything to say, 
and, when it has promised a robe of twice-dyed byssus 
and a union of equal-sized pearls, it has reached the end 
of its tether. And it is also nearly the whole of what I 
find most convulsive in a similar emergency. 

“Nevertheless I do not always abide by so, scanty a 
programme, but embroider my barren canvas with a few 
differently colored silken threads picked up here and 
there. But these pieces are short or are twenty times 
renewed, and do not keep their places well on the 
groundwork of the woof. I speak of love with tolerable 
elegance because I have read many fine things about it. 
It only needs the talent of an actor to do so. With many 
women this appearance is enough; my habitual writing 
and imagination prevent me from being short of such 
materials, and every mind that is at all practiced may 
easily arrive at the same result by application; but I do 
not feel a word of what I say, and I repeat in a whisper 
like the ancient poet: Cynthia, make haste. 

“I have often been accused of deceit and dissimula- 
tion. Nobody in the world would be so pleased as my- 
self to speak freely and pour forth his heart! but, as I 
have not an idea or feeling similar to those of the people 


222 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


who surround me — as, at the first true word that I 
let fall, there would be a hurrah and a general outcry, I 
have preferred to keep silence, or, if speaking, to dis- 
charge only such follies as are admitted and have rights 
of citizenship. I should be welcome if I said to the 
ladies what I have just written to you! I do not think 
that they would have any great liking for my manner of 
seeing and ways of looking upon love. 

As for men, I am equally unable to tell them to their 
face that they are wrong not to go on all fours; and that 
is in truth the most favorable thought that I have with 
respect to them. I do not wish to have a quarrel at 
every word. What does it matter, after all, what I think 
or do not thiuk; or if I am sad when I seem gay, and 
joyous when I have an air of melancholy ? I cannot be 
blamed for not going naked; may I not clothe my counte- 
nance as I do my body ? Why should a mask be more 
reprehensible than a pair of breeches, or a lie than a 
corset ? 

‘‘Alas! the earth turns round the sun, roasted on one 
side and frozen on the other. A battle takes place in 
which six hundred thousand men cut each other to pieces; 
the weather is as fine as possible; the flowers display un- 
paralleled coquetry, and impudently open their luxuriant 
bosoms beneath the very feet of the horses. To-day a 
fabulous number of good deeds have been performed; • it 
is pouring fast, there is snow and thunder, lightning and 
hail; you would think that the world was coming to an 
end. The benefactors of humanity are muddy to the 
waist and as dirty as dogs, unless they have carriages. 
Creation mocks pitilessly at the creature, and shouts 
keen sarcasms at it every minute. Everything is 
indifferent to everything, and each lives and vegetates in 
virtue of its own law. What difference does it make to 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


223 


the sun, the beetroots, or even to men, whether I do this 
or that, live or die, suffer or rejoice, dissemble or be 
sincere ? 

A straw falls upon an ant and breaks its third leg at 
the second articulation; a rock falls upon a village and 
crushes it; I do not believe that one of these misfortunes 
draws more tears than the other from the golden eyes of 
the stars. You are my best friend, if the expression is 
not as hollow as a bell; but were I to die, it is very 
evident that, mourn as you might, you would not abstain 
from dining for even two days, and would, in spite of 
such a terrible catastrophe, continue to play trick-track 
very pleasantly. Which of my friends or mistresses will 
know my name and Christian names twenty years hence, 
or would recognize me in the street if I were to appear 
in a coat out at the elbows? Forgetfulness and nothing- 
ness are the whole of man. 

feel myself as perfectly alone as possible, and all 
the threads passing from me to things and from things to 
me have been broken one by one. There are few ex- 
amples of a man who, preserving a knowledge of the 
movements that take place within him, has arrived at 
such a degree of brutishness. I am a flagon of liquor 
which has been left uncorked and whose spirit has com- 
pletely evaporated. The beverage has the same appear- 
ance and color; but taste it, and you will find in it noth- 
ing but the insipidity of water. 

^‘When I think of it, I am frightened at the rapidity 
of this decomposition; if it continues I shall be obliged 
to salt myself, or I shall inevitably grow rotten, and the 
worms will come after me, seeing that I have no longer 
a soul, and that the latter alone constitutes the difference 
between a body and a corpse. One year ago, not more, 
I had still something human in me; I was disquieted, I 


2^4 mademoiselle : de maupln 

was seeking. I had a thought cherished above all others, 
a sort of aim, an ideal; I wanted to be loved and I had 
the dreams that come at that age — less vaporous, less 
chaste, it is true, than those of ordinary youths, but yet 
contained within just limits. 

^‘Little by little the incorporeal part was withdrawn 
and dissipated, and there was left at the bottom of me 
only a thick bed of coarse slime. The dream became a 
nightmare, and the chimera a succubus; the world of the 
soul closed its ivory gates against me; I now understand 
only what I touch with my hands; my dreams are of 
stone; everything condenses aud hardens about me, 
nothing floats, nothing wavers, there is neither air nor 
breath; matter presses upon me, encroaches upon me 
and crushes me; I am a pilgrim who, having fallen asleep 
with his feet in the water on a summer’s day, has 
awaked in winter with his feet locked fast in the ice. I 
no longer wish for anybody’s love or friendship; glory it- 
self, that brilliant aureolia which I had so desired for my 
brow, no longer inspires me with the slightest longing. 
Only one thing, alas! now palpitates within me, and that 
is the horrible desire that draws me towards Theodore. 
You see to what all my moral notions are reduced. What 
is physically beautiful is good, all that is ugly is evil. I 
might see a beautiful woman who, to my own knowledge, 
had the most villainous soul in the world, and was an 
adultress and a poisoner, and I confess that this would 
be a matter of indifference to me and would in no way 
prevent me from taking delight in her, if the shape of 
her nose suited me. 

‘‘This is the way in which I picture to myself supreme 
happiness; there is a large square building, without any 
windows looking outward; a large court surrounded by a 
white marble colonnade, a crystsl fountain in the centre 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPLN 


225 


with a jet of quicksilver after the Arabian fashion, and 
boxes of orange and pomegranate trees placed alternately; 
overhead, a blue sky and a very yellow sun; large grey- 
hounds with pike-like noses should be sleeping here and 
there; from time to time barefooted negroes with rings of 
gold on their legs, and beautiful white, slender serving- 
w'omen, clothed in rich and capricious garments, should 
pass through the hollow arcades, a basket on their arm 
or an amphora on their head. For myself, I should be 
there, motionless and silent, beneath a magnificent can- 
opy, surrounded with piles of cushions, having a huge 
tame lion supporting my elbow and the naked breast of 
a young slave like a stool beneath my foot, and smoking 
opium in a large jade pipe. 

‘‘ I cannot imagine paradise differently; and, if God 
really wishes me to go there after my death, he will build 
me a little kiosk on this plan in the corner of some star. 
Paradise, as it is commonly described, appears to me 
much too musical, and I confess, with all humility that I 
am perfectly incapable of enduring a sonata which would 
last for merely ten thousand years. 

You see the nature of my Eldorado, of my promised 
land; it is a dream like any other; but it has this special 
feature, that I never, introduce any known countenance 
into it; that none of my friends has crossed the threshold 
of this imaginary palace; and that none of the women 
that I have possessed has sat down beside me on the 
velvet of the cushions; I am there alone in the midst of 
phantoms. I have never conceived the idea of loving all 
the women’s faces and graceful shadows of young girls 
with whom I people it; I have never supposed one of 
them in love with me. In this fantastic seraglio I have 
created no favorite sultana. There are negresses, 
mulattoes, Jewesses with blue skin and red hair, Greeks 

Maupin— 14 


226 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


and Circassians, Spaniards and Englishwoman; but they 
are to me only symbols of color and feature, and I have 
them just as a man has all kinds of wines in his cellar, 
and every species of humming-bird in his collection. 
They are machines for pleasure, pictures which have no 
need of a frame, statues which come to you when you 
call them and wish to look at them closely. A woman 
possesses this unquestionable advantage over a statue, 
that she turns of herself in the direction that you wish, 
whereas you are obliged to walk round the statue and 
place yourself at the point of sight — which is fatiguing. 

“You must see that with such ideas I cannot remain 
in these times nor in this world of ours; for it is im- 
possible to exist thus by the side of time and space. I 
must find something else. 

“ Such thoughts lead simply and logically to this con- 
clusion. As only satisfaction of the eye, polish of form, 
and purity of feature are sought for, they are accepted 
wherever they are found. This is the explanation of the 
singular aberrations in the love of the ancients. 

“Since the time of Christ there has not been a single 
human statue in which adolescent beauty has been ideal- 
ized and represented with the care that characterizes the 
ancient sculptors. Woman has become the symbol of 
moral and physical beauty; man has really fallen from the 
day that the infant was born at Bethlehem. Woman is the 
queen of creation; the stars unite in a crown upon her 
head, the crescent of the moon glories in waxing beneath 
her foot, the sun yields his purest gold to make her 
jewels, painters who wish to flatter the angels give them 
women’s faces, and, certes, I shall not be the one to 
blame them. 

“Previous to the gentle and worthy narrator of para- 
bles, it was quite the opposite; gods or heroes were not 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 


22 ^ 


made feminine when it was wished to make them charm- 
ing; they had their own type, at once vigorous and deli- 
cate, but always male, hqwever amorous their outlines 
might be, and however smooth and destitute of muscles 
and veins the workman might have made their divine 
legs and arms. He was more ready to bring the special 
beauty of women into accordance with this type. He 
enlarged the shoulders, attenuated the hips, gave more 
prominence to the throat, accentuated the joints of the 
arms and thighs more strongly. There is scarcely any 
difference between Paris and Helen. And so the 
hermaphrodite was one of the most eagerly cherished 
chimeras of idolatrous antiquity. 

‘‘This son of Hermes and Aphrodite is, in fact, one of 
the sweetest creations of Pagan genius. Nothing in the 
world can be imagined more ravishing than these two 
bodies,, harmoniously blended together and both perfect, 
these two beauties so equal and so different, forming but 
one superior to both, because they are reciprocally tem- 
pered and improved. To an exclusive worshipper of 
form, can there be a more delightful uncertainty than 
that into which you are thrown by the sight of the back, 
the ambiguous loins, and the strong, delicate legs, which 
you are doubtful whether to attribute to Mercury ready 
to take his flight or to Diana coming forth from the bath? 
The torso is a compound of the most charming monstros- 
ities; on the bosom, which is plump and quite pubescent, 
swells with strange grace the breast of a young maiden;; 
beneath the sides, which are well covered and quite femi- 
nine in their softness, you may divine the muscles and 
the ribs, as in the sides of a young lad; the belly is rather 
flat for a woman, and rather round for a man, and in the 
whole habit of the body there is something cloudy and 
undecided which it is impossible to describe, and which 


228 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


possesses quite a peculiar attraction. Theodore would 
certainly be an excellent model for this kind of beauty; 
nevertheless, I think that the feminine portion prevails 
with him, and that he has preserved more of Salmacis 
than did the Hermaphrodite of the Metamorphoses. 

^‘It is a singular thing that I have nearly ceased to 
think about his sex, and that I love him in perfect indif- 
ference to it. Sometimes I seek to persuade myself that 
such love is abominable, and I tell myself so as severely 
as possible; but it only comes from my lips — it is a piece 
of reasoning which I go through but do not feel; it really 
seems to me as if it were the simplest thing in the world 
and as if any one else would do the same in my place. 

“ I see him, I listen to him speaking or singing — for he 
sings admirably — and take an unspeakable pleasure in 
doing so. He produces the impression of a woman upon 
me to such an extent that one day, in the heat of con- 
versation, I inadvertently called him Madame, which 
made him laugh in what appeared to me to be a some- 
what constrained manner. 

‘‘Yet, if it were a woman, what motives could there 
be for this disguise ? I cannot account for them in any 
way. It is comprehensible for every young, very hand- 
some and perfectly beardless cavalier to disguise himself 
as a woman; he can thus open a thousand doors which 
would have remained obstinately shut against him, and 
the quid pro quo may involve him in quite a labyrinthine 
and jovial complication of adventures. You may, in this 
manner, reach a woman who is strictly guarded, or re- 
lease a piece of good fortune under favor of the surprise. 

“But I am not very clear as to the advantages to be 
derived by a young and beautiful woman from rambling 
about in man’s clothes. A woman ought not to give up 
in this way the pleasure of being courted, madrigalized 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


229 


and worshipped; she should rather give up her life, and 
she would be right, for what is a woman’s life without 
all this ? Nothing, or something worse than death. And 
I am always astonished that women who are thirty years 
old, or have the small-pox, do not throw themselves down 
from the top of a steeple. 

In spite of all this, something stranger than any rea- 
soning cries to me that it is a woman, and that it is she 
of whom I have dreamed, she whom alone I am to love, 
and by whom I alone am to be loved. Yes, it was she, 
the goddess with eagle glance and beautiful royal hands, 
who used to smile with condescension upon me from the 
height of her throne of clouds. She has presented her- 
self to me in this disguise to prove me, to see whether I 
should recognize her, whether my amorous gaze would 
penetrate the veils which enwrap her, as in those won- 
drous tales where the fairies appear at first in the forms 
of beggars, and then suddenly stand out resplendent with 
gold and precious stones. 

I have recognized thee, O my love! At the sight of 
thee my heart leaped within my bosom as did St. John 
in the womb of St. Anne, when she was visited by the 
Virgin; a blazing light was she through the air; I per- 
ceived, as it were, an odor of divine ambrosia; I saw the 
trail of fire at thy feet, and I straightway understood that 
thou wert not a mere mortal. 

^^The melodious sounds of St. Cecilia’s viol, to which 
the angels listen with rapture, are harsh and discordant 
in comparison with the pearly cadences which escape 
from thy ruby lips; the Graces, young and smiling, dance 
a ceaseless roundel about thee; the birds, warbling, bend 
their little variegated heads to see thee better as thou 
passest through the woods, and pipe to thee their pretti- 
est refrains; the amorous moon rises earlier to kiss thee 


230 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


with her pale silver lips, for she has forsaken her shep- 
herd for theej the wind is careful not to efface the delicate 
print of thy charming foot upon the sand; the fountain 
becomes smoother than crystal when thou bendest over 
it, fearing to wrinkle and distort the reflection of the ce- 
lestial countenance; the modest violets themselves open 
up their little hearts to thee and display a thousand co- 
quetries before thee; the jealous strawberry is piqued to 
emulation and strives to equal the divine carnation of thy 
mouth; the imperceptible gnat hums joyously and ap- 
plauds thee with the beating of its wings; all nature loves 
and admires thee, who art her fairest work! 

^^Ah! now I live — until this moment I was but a dead 
man; now I am freed of the shroud, and stretch both my 
wasted hands out of the grave towards the sun; my blue, 
ghastly color has left me; my blood circulates swiftly 
through my veins. The frightful silence which reigned 
around me is broken at last. The black, opaque vault 
which weighed so heavy on my brow is illumined. A 
thousand mysterious voices whisper in my ear, charming 
stars sparkle above me, and sand the windings of my 
path with their spangles of gold; the daisies laugh sweet- 
ly to me, and the bell-flowers murmur my name with 
their little restless tongues. I understand a multitude of 
things which I used not to understand, I discover affini- 
ties and marvellous sympathies, I know the language of 
the roses and nightingales and I read with fluency the 
book which once I could not even spell. 

'‘I have recognized that I had a friend in the respect- 
able old oak all covered with mistletoe and parasitic 
plants, and that the frail and languid periwinkle, whose 
large blue eyes is ever running over with tears, had long 
cherished a discreet and restrained passion for me. It 
is love, it is love that has opened my eyes and has given 


MADEMOISELLE BE MA UPLN 


231 


me the answer to the enigma. Love has come down to 
the bottom of the vault where my soul cowered numb and 
somnolent; he has taken it by the finger-tips and has 
brought it up the steep and narrow staircase leading with- 
out. All the locks of the prison were picked, and for the 
first time this poor Psyche came forth from me in whom 
she had been shut up. 

‘^Another life has become mine. I breathe with the 
breast of another, and a blow wounding him would kill 
me. Before this happy day I was those gloomy Japanese 
idols which look down perpetually at their own bellies. 
I was a spectator of myself, the audience of the comedy 
that I was playing; I looked at myself living, and I 
listened to the oscillations of my heart as to the throb- 
bing of a pendulum. That was all. Images were por- 
trayed on my heedless eyes, sounds struck my inattentive 
ear, but nothing from the external world reached my soul. 
The existence of any one else was not necessary to me; 
I even doubted any existence other than my own, con- 
cerning which again I was scarcely sure. It seemed to 
me that I was alone in the midst of the universe, and 
that all the rest was but vapors, images, vain illusions, 
fleeting appearances destined to people this nothingness. 
What a difference! 

“And yet what if my presentiment is deceiving me, 
and Theodore is really a man, as every one believes him 
to be! Such marvellous beauties have sometimes been 
seen, and great youth assists such a'h illusion. It is 
something that I will not think of and that would drive 
me mad; the seed fallen yesterday into the sterile rock of 
my heart has already pierced it in every direction with 
its thousand fillaments; it has clung vigorously to it, and 
to pluck it up would be impossible. It is already 
a blossoming and green-growing tree with Jwisting mus- 


232 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


cular roots. If I came to know with certainty that 
Theodore is not a woman, I do not know, alas! whether 
I should not still love him.” 


CHAPTER X 

My friend, you were quite right in dissuading me from 
the plan that I had formed of seeing men and studying 
them thoroughly before giving my heart to any among 
them. I have for ever extinguished love within me, and 
even the possibility of love. 

Poor young girls that we are, brought up with so 
much care, surrounded in such maidenly fashion with a 
triple wall of reticence and precaution, who are allowed 
to understand nothing, to suspect nothing, and whose 
principal knowledge is to know nothing, in what strange 
errors do we live, and what treacherous chimeras cradle 
us in their arms! 

‘^Ah! Graciosa, thrice cursed be the minute when the 
idea of this disguise occurred to me; what horrors, 
infamies, brutalities have I been forced to witness or to 
hear! what a treasure of chaste and precious ignorance 
have I dissipated in but a short time! 

‘Ht was a fair moonlight, do you remember? we were 
walking together, at the very bottom of the garden, in 
that dull, little-frequented alley, terminated at one end 
by a statue of a flute-playing Faun which has lost its nose, 
and whose whole body is covered with a thick leprosy of 
blackish moss, and at the other by a counterfeit view 
painted on the wall, and half-effaced by the rain. 

23T 


234 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


‘^Through the yet spare foliage of the yoke-elm we 
could here and there see the twinkling of the stars 
and the curved crescent of the moon. A fragrance of 
young shoots and fresh plants reached us from the 
parterre with the languid breath of a gentle breeze; a 
hidden bird was piping a languorous and whimsical tune; 
we, like true young girls, were talking of love, wooers, 
marriage, and the handsome cavilier that we had seen at 
mass; we were exchanging our few ideas of the world 
and things; we were turning over an expression that we 
had chanced to hear and whose meaning seemed obscure 
and singular to us, in a hundred different ways; we were 
asking a thousand of those absurd questions which only 
the most perfect innocence can imagine. What primi- 
tive poetry and what adorable foolishness were there in 
those furtive conversations between two little simpletons 
who had but just left a boarding-school! 

*‘You wished to have for your lover a bold, proud 
young fellow, with black moustache and hair, large 
feathers, and a large sword — a sort of bully in love, and 
you indulged to the full in the heroic and triumphant; 
you dreamed of nothing but duels and escalades, and 
miraculous devotion, and you would have been ready to 
throw your glove into the lions’ den that your Esplan- 
dian might follow to fetch it. It was very comical to see 
you, a little girl as you were then, blonde, blushing 
and yielding to the faintest blast, delivering yourself 
of such generous tirades all in a breath, and with the most 
martial air in the world. 

‘‘For myself, although I was only six months older 
than you, I was six years less romantic; one thing chiefly 
disquieted me, and this was to know what men said 
among themselves and what they did after leaving the 
drawing-rooms and theatres; I felt that there were many 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


235 


faulty and obscure sides to their lives, which were care- 
fully veiled from our gaze, and which it was very im- 
portant that we should know. Sometimes hidden be- 
hind a curtain, I would watch from a distance the gentle- 
men who came to the house, and it seemed to me then 
as if I could distinguish something base and cynical in 
their manner a coarse carelessness or a wild preoccupied 
look, which I could no longer discern in them as soon as 
they had come in, and which they seemed to lay aside, 
as by enchantment, on the threshold of the room. All, 
young as well as old, appeared to me to have uniformly 
adopted conventional masks, conventional opinions and 
conventional modes of speech when in the presence of 
women. 

‘‘From the corner of the drawing-room, where I used 
to sit as straight as a doll, without leaning back in my 
easy-chair, I would listen and look as I rolled my bou- 
quet between my fingers; although my eyes were cast 
down I could see to right and to left, before and behind me; 
like the fabulous eyes of the lynx my eyes could pierce 
through the walls, and I could have told what was going 
on in an adjoining room. 

“I had also perceived a noteworthy difference in the 
way which they spoke to married women; they no longer 
used discreet, polished, and childishly embellished 
phrases such as were addressed to myself or my com- 
panions, but displayed bolder sprightliness, less sober 
and more disembarassed manners, open reticence, and 
the ambiguity that quickly comes from a corruption which 
knows that it has a similar corruption before it; I was 
quite sensible that there existed an element in common , 
between them which did not exist between us, and I 
would have given anything to know what this element 


was. 


236 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


With what anxiety and furious curiosity I would fol- 
low with eye and ear the laughing, buzzing groups of 
young men, who, after making a halt at some points in 
the circle, would resume their walk, talking and casting 
ambiguous glances as they passed. On their scornfully 
puffed-up lips hovered incredulous sneers; they looked 
as though they were scoffing at what they had just said, 
and were retracting the compliments and adoration with 
which they had overwhelmed us. I could not hear their 
words; but I knew from the movements of their lips that 
they were, uttering expressions in a language with which 
I was unacquainted, and of which no one had ever made 
use in my presence. 

“ Even those who had the most submissive air would 
raise their heads with a very perceptible shade of revolt and 
weariness; a sigh of breathlessness, like that of an actor 
who has reached the end of a long couplet, would escape 
from their bosoms in spite of themselves, and when leaving 
us they would make a half-turn on their heels in an eager, 
hurried manner which denoted a sort of internal satisfac- 
tion at their release from the hard task of being polite 
and gallant. 

‘‘I would have given a year of my life to listen without 
being seen, to an hour of their conversation. I could 
often understand, by certain attitudes, indirect gestures 
and side-glances, that I was the subject of their conver- 
sation, and that they were speaking of my age or my face. 
Then I would be on burning coals; the few subdued 
words and partial scraps of sentences reaching me at in- 
tervals would excite my curiosity to the highest degree, 
without being capacle of satisfying it, and I would in- 
dulge in strange perplexities and doubts. 

‘‘Generally, what was said seemed to be favorable to 
me, and it was not this that disquieted me; I did not care 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


237 


very much about being thought beautiful; it was the 
slight observations dropped into the hollow of the ear, 
and nearly always followed by long sneers and singular 
winkings of the eye, that is what I should have liked to 
hear; and I would have cheerfully abandoned the most 
flowery and perfumed conversation in the world to hear 
one of such expressions as are whispered behind a curtain 
or in the corner of a doorway. 

“ If I had had a lover I should have greatly liked to 
know the way in which he spoke of me to another man, 
and the terms in which, with a little wine in his head and 
both elbows on the table-cloth, he would boast of his 
good fortune to the companions of his orgie. 

“ I know this now, and in truth I am sorry that I know 
it. It is always so. 

^‘My idea was a mad one, but what is done is done, 
and what is learned cannot be unlearned. I did not 
listen to you my dear Graciosa, and I am sorry for it; 
but we do not always listen to reason, especially when it 
comes from such pretty lips as yours, for, from some reason 
or other’ we can never imagine advice to be wise unless it 
is given by some old head that is hoary and gray, as 
though sixty years of stupidity could make one intelligent. 

^‘But all this was too much torment, and I could not 
stand it; I was broiling 'in my little skin like a chestnut 
on the pan. The fatal apple swelled in the foliage above 
my head, and I was obliged to end by giving it a bite, 
being free to throw it away afterwards, if the flavor 
seemed bitter to me. 

acted like fair Eve, my very dear great grand- 
mother, and bit it. 

‘‘The death of my uncle, the only relation left to me, 
giving me freedom of action, I put into practice what I 
had dreamed of for so long. My precautions were taken 


238 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


with the greatest care to prevent any one from suspecting 
my sex. I had learned how to handle a sword and fire a 
pistol; I rode perfectly, and with a hardihood of which 
few horsemen would have been capable; I carefully stud- 
ied the way to wear my cloak and make my riding-whip 
clack, and in a few months I succeeded in transforming 
a girl who was thought rather pretty into a far more 
pretty cavalier who lacked scarcely anything but a 
moustache. I realized my property, and left town, deter- 
mined not to return without the most complete experience. 

“ It was the only means of clearing up my doubts; to 
have had lovers would have taught me nothing, or would 
at least have afforded me but incomplete glimpses, and I 
wished to study man thoroughly, to anatomize him with 
inexorable scalpel fibre by fibre, and to have him alive 
and palpitating on my dissecting table; to do this it would 
be necessary to see him at home, alone and undressed, and 
to follow him when he went out walking, and visited the 
tavern or other places. With my disguise I could go 
everywhere without being remarked; there would be no 
concealment before me, all reserve and constraint would 
be thrown aside, I would receive confidences, and 
would give false ones to provoke others that were true. 
Alas! women have read only man’s romance and never his 
history. 

^‘It is a frightful thing to think of, and one which is 
not thought of, how profoundly ignorant we are of the 
life and conduct of those who appear to love us, and 
whom we are going to marry. Their real existence is as 
completely unknown to us as if they were inhabitants of 
Saturn or of some other planet a hundred million leagues 
from our sublunary ball; one would think that they, were 
of a different species, and that there is not the slightest 
intellectual link between the two sexes; the virtues o£ 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


239 


the one are the vices of the other, and what excites ad- 
miration for a man brings disgrace upon a woman. 

As for us, our life is clear and may be pierced at a 
glance. It is easy to follow us from our home to the 
boarding-school, and from the boarding-school to our 
home; what we do is no mystery to anybody; every one 
may see our bad stump-drawing, our water-color bou- 
quets composed of a pansy and a rose as large as a cab- 
bage, and with a stalk tastefully tied with a bright-colored 
ribbon; the slippers which we emdroider for our father’s 
or grandfather’s birthday have nothing very occult and 
disquieting in them. Our sonatas and ballads are gone 
through with the most desirable coldness. We are well 
and duly tied to our mother’s apron strings, and at nine 
or ten o’clock at the latest retire we into our little white 
beds at the end of our discreet and tidy cells, wherein we 
are virtuously bolted and padlocked until next morning.- 
The most watchful and jealous susceptibility could find 
nothing to complain of. 

‘^The most limpid crystal does not possess the trans- 
parency of such a life. 

‘‘The man who takes us knows what we have done 
from the minute we were weaned, and even before it if 
he likes to pursue his researches so far. Our life is not 
a life, it is a species of vegetation like that of mosses and 
flowers; the icy shadow of the maternal stem hovers 
over us, poor, stifled rosebuds who dare not bloom. Our 
chief business is to keep ourselves very straight, well 
laced, and well brushed, with our eyes becomingly cast 
down, and for immobility and stiffness to surpass manikins 
and puppets on springs. 

“We are forbidden to speak, or to mingle in conver- 
sation, except to answer yes or no if we are asked a ques- 
tion. As soon as anybody is going to say something 


240 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


interesting we are sent away to practice the harp or 
harpsichord and our music-masters are all at least sixty 
years old, and take snuff horribly. The models hung up 
in our rooms have a very vague and evasive anatomy. 
Before the gods of Greece can present themselves in a 
young ladies’ boarding-school they must first purchase 
very ample box-coats at an old-clothes shop and get 
themselves engraved in stippling, after which they look 
like porters or cabmen, and are little calculated to in- 
flame the imagination. 

‘‘In their anxiety to prevent us from being romantic 
we were made idiots. The period of our education is 
spent not in teaching us something, but in preventing us 
from learning something. 

“We are really prisoners in body and mind; but how 
could a young man, who has freedom of action, who goes 
out in the morning not to return until the next morning, 
who has money, and who can make it or spend it as he 
pleases, how could he justify the employment of his time? 
what man would tell his sweetheart all that he did day 
and night? Not one, even of those who are reputed the 
most pure. 

“I had sent my horse and my garments to a little 
grange of mine at some distance from the town. I dressed, 
mounted, and rode off, not without a singular heaviness 
of heart. I regretted nothing, for I was leaving nothing 
behind, neither relations nor friends, nor dog nor cat, and 
yet I was sad, and almost had tears in my eyes; the farm 
which I had visited only five or six times had no particu- 
lar interest for me, and it was not the liking that we take 
for certain places that affects us when leaving them which 
prompted me to turn around two or three times to see 
again from a distance its spiral of bluish smoke ascend- 
ing amid the trees. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


.241 


There it was that I had left my title of woman with 
my dresses and petticoats; twenty years of my life were 
locked up in the room where I had made my toilet, years 
which were to be counted no longer, and which had 
ceased to concern me'. ^ Here lies Madelaine de Maupin’ 
might have been written on the door, for I was, in fact, 
no longer Madelaine de Maupin but Theodore de S^r- 
annes, and no one would call me any more by the sweet 
name of Madelaine. 

The drawer which held my henceforth useless dresses 
appeared to me like the coffin of my fair illusions; I was 
a man, or, at least, had the appearance of one; the young 
girl was dead. 

^^When I had completely lost sight of the chestnut 
trees which surround the grange, it seemed to me as if I 
were no longer myself but another, and I looked back to 
my former actions as to the actions of a stranger which I 
had witnessed, or the beginning of a romance which I 
had not read through to the end. 

recalled complacently a thousand little details, the 
childish simplicity of which brought an indulgent, and 
sometimes a rather scornful smile to my lips, like that of 
a young libertine listening to the arcadian and pastoral 
confidences of a third-form school-boy; and, just as I was 
separating myself from them forever, all the puerilities of 
my childhood and girlhood ran along the side of the road 
making a thousand signs of friendship to me and blow- 
ing me kisses from the tips of their white tapering 
fingers. 

“I spurred my horse to rid myself of these enervating 
emotions; the trees sped rapidly past me on either side; 
but the wanton swarm, buzzing more than a hive of bees, 
began to run on the sidewalks and call to me, ‘ Madelaine! 
Madelaine! ’ 

Maupin— 15 


242 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 


‘'I struck my animal’s neck smartly with my whip, 
which made him redouble his speed. So rapidly was I 
riding, that my hair was nearly straight behind my head, 
and my cloak was horizontal, as though its folds were 
sculptured in stone; once I looked behind, and I saw the 
dust raised by my horse’s hoofs like a little white cloud 
far away on the horizon. 

“I stopped for awhile. 

“I perceived something white moving in a bush of 
eglantine at the side of the road, and a little clear voice 
as sweet as silver fell upon my ear: ‘ Madelaine, Made- 
laine, where are you going so far away, Madelaine ? I 
am your virginity, dear child; that is why I have a white 
dress, a white crown, and a white skin. But why are 
you wearing boots, Madelaine? Methought you had a 
very pretty foot. Boots and hose, and a large plumed 
hat like a cavalier going to the wars! Wherefore, pray, 
this long sword beating and bruising your thigh? You 
have a strange equipment, Madelaine, and I am not sure 
whether I should go with 3^ou or not.’ 

“ ^ If you are afraid, my dear, return home, go water 
my flowers and care for my doves. But, in truth, you 
are wrong; you would be safer in these garments of good 
cloth than in your gauze and flax. My boots prevent it 
being seen whether I have a pretty foot; this sword is 
for my defence, and the feather waving in my hat is 
to frighten away all the nightingales who would come and 
sing false love-songs in my ear.’ 

“I continued my journey; in the sighs of the wind I 
thought I could recognize the last phrase of the sonata 
which I had learned for my uncle’s birthday, and in a 
large rose lifting its full-blown head above a little wall, 
the model of the big rose from which I had made so 
many water-color drawings; passing before a house I saw 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


243 


the phantom of my curtains moving at a window. Ail 
my past seemed to be clinging to me to prevent me 
from advancing and attaining to a new future. 

“I hesitated two or three times and turned my horse’s 
head in the opposite direction. 

‘‘But the little blue snake curiosity hissed softly to me 
insidious words, and said; ‘ Go on, go on, Theodore; the 
opportunity for instruction is a good one; if you do not 
learn to-day, you will never know. Will you give your 
noble heart to chance to the first appearance of honesty 
and passion ? Men hide many extraordinary secrets 
from us, Theodore!’ 

“ I resumed my gallop. ^ 

“The hose was on my body, but not in my disposition; 
I felt a sort of uneasiness, and, as it were, a shudder of 
fear, to give it its proper name, at a dark part of the for- 
rest; the report of a poacher’s gun nearly made me faint. 
If it had been a robber, the pistols in my holsters and my 
formidable sword would certainly have been of little as- 
sistance to me. But by degrees I became hardened, and 
paid no more attention to it. 

“The sun was sinking slowly beneath the horizon, like 
the lustre in a theatre which is turned down when the 
performance is over. Rabbits and pheasants crossed the 
road from time to time; the shadows became longer, and 
the distance was tinted with red. Some portions of the 
sky were of a very sweet and softened lilac color, others 
resembled the citron and orange; the night-birds began to 
sing, and a crowd of strange sounds issued from the wood; 
the little light that remained died away, and the dark- 
ness became complete, increased, as it was, by the shade 
cast by the trees. 

“I, who had never gone out alone at night, in a large 
forest at eight o’clock in the evening! Can you imagine 


244 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


such a thing, Graciosa, I who used to be dying of fear 
at the end of the garden ? Terror seized me more than 
ever, and my heart beat terribly; I confess that it was 
with great satisfaction that I saw the lights of the town to 
which I was going, peeping and sparkling at the back of 
a hill. As soon as I saw those brilliant specks, like little 
terrestrial stars, my fright completely left me. It seemed 
to me as if these indifferent gleams were the open eyes 
of so many friends who were watching for me. 

^^My horse was no less pleased than I was myself, 
and, inhaling a sweet stable odor more agreeable to him 
than the scents of the daisies and strawberries in the 
woods, he hastened straight to the Red Lion Hotel. 

A golden gleam shone through the leaden casements 
of the inn, the tin signboard of which was swinging right 
and left, and moaning like an old woman, for the north 
wind was beginning to freshen. I intrusted my horse to 
a groom, and entered the kitchen. 

^^An enormous fire-place opened its red and black 
jaws in the back-ground, swallowing up a faggot at each 
mouthful, while at either side of the andirons two dogs, 
seated on their haunches and nearly as high as a man, 
were toasting themselves with all the phlegm in the 
world, contenting themselves with lifting their paws a 
little and heaving a sort of sigh when the heat became 
too intense; but they would certainly have let themselves 
be reduced to cinders rather than have retired a step. 

‘‘My arrival did not appear to please them; and it 
was in vain that I tried to become acquainted with them, 
by stroking their heads now and then; they cast stealthy 
looks at me which imported nothing good. This sur- 
prized me, for animals come readily to me. 

“The inn-keeper came up and asked me what I 
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MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


245 


was a paunch-bellied man, with a red nose, 
wall eyes, and a smile that went round his head. At 
every word he uttered he displayed a double row of teeth, 
which were pointed and separated like an ogre’s. The 
large kitchen-knife which hung by his side had a dubious 
appearance, and looked as if it might serve several 
purposes. When I had told him what I wanted he 
went up to one of the dogs and gave him a kick some- 
where. The dog rose and proceeded towards a sort of 
v/heel which he entered with a cross and pitiful look, ' 
casting a glance of reproach at me. At last, seeing that 
no mercy was to be hoped for, he began to turn his 
wheel, and with it the spit on which the chichen for my 
supper was broached. I inwardly promised to throw 
him the remains of it for his trouble, and began to look 
round the kitchen until it should be ready. 

^‘The ceiling was crossed by broad oaken joists, all 
blistered and blackened by the smoke from the hearth 
and candles. Pewter dishes brighter than silver, and white 
crockery-ware, with blue nosegays on it, shone in the 
shade on the dressers. Along the walls were numerous 
files of well-scoured pans, not unlike the ancient bucklers 
which were hung up in a row along the Grecian or Ro- 
man triremes (forgive me, Graciosa, for the epic magni- 
ficence of this comparison.) One or two big servant- 
girls were busy about a large table moving plates and 
dishes and forks, the most agreeable of all music when 
you are hungry, for then the hearing of the stomach 
becomes keener than that of the ear. 

^‘In short, notwithstanding the money-box mouth and 
saw-like teeth of the inn-keeper, the inn had quite an 
honest and jovial look; and if the inn-keeper’s smile had 
been a fathom longer, and his teeth three times as long 
and as white, still the rain was beginning to patter on the 


246 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


panes, and the wind to howl in such a fashion as to take 
away all inclination to leave, for I know nothing more 
lugubrious than such wailing on a dark and rainy night. 

An idea occurred to me and made me smile, and it 
was this — that nobody in the world would come to look 
for me where I was. 

''Who, indeed, would have thought that little Made- 
laine, instead of being in her warm bed with her alabas- 
ter night-lamp beside her, a novel under her pillow, and her 
maid in the adjoining room ready to hasten to her at the 
slightest nocturnal alarm, would be balancing herself in 
a rush-bottom chair at a country inn twenty leagues from 
her home, her booted feet resting on the andirons, and 
her hands swaggeringly thrust into her pockets? 

‘^Yes, Madelinette did not remain like her compan- 
ions, idly resting her elbow on the edge of the balcony 
among the bind-weed and jessamine at the window, and 
watching the violet fringes on the horizon at the end of 
the plain, or some little rose-colored cloud rounded by 
the May breeze. She did not strew lily leaves through 
mother-of-pearl palaces wherein to house her chimeras; 
she did not, like you, fair dreamers, clothe some hollow 
phantom with all imaginable perfections; she wished to 
be acquainted with man before giving herself to a man; 
she forsook everything, her beautiful brilliant robes of 
velvet and silk, her necklaces, bracelets, birds and 
flowers; she voluntarily gave up adoration, prostrate po- 
liteness, bouquets and madrigals, the pleasure of being 
considered more beautiful and better dressed than you, 
her sweet woman’s name and all that she was, to learn 
the great science of life throughout the world. 

‘‘li this were known, people would say that Madelaine 
is mad. You have said so yourself, my dear Graciosa; 
but truly mad are those who fling their souls to the wind. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


247 


and sow their love at random on stone and rock, not 
knowing whether a single ear will germinate. 

‘‘O Graciosa! there is a thought that I have never had 
without terror; the thought of loving some one unworthy 
of being loved! of laying your soul bare before impure 
eyes, and letting profanity penetrate into the sanctuary of 
your heart! of rolling your limpid tide for a time with a 
miry wave! However perfect the separation may be, 
something of the slime always remains, and the stream 
cannot recover its former transparency. 

‘‘To think that a man has kissed you and touched you; 
that he has seen your form; that he can say: She is 
like this or that; she has such a mark in such a place; 
she has such a shade in her soul; she laughs at this and 
weeps at that; her dream is of this description; here is a 
feather from her chimera’s wing in my portfolio; this 
ring is plaited with her hair; a piece of her heart is folded 
up in this letter; she used to caress me after such a 
fashion, and this was her usual expression of fondness! 

“Ah! Cleopatra, I can now understand why in the 
morning you had killed the lover with whom you had spent 
the night. Sublime cruelty, for which formerly I 
could not find sufficient imprecations! Great voluptuary, 
how well you knew human nature, and what penetration 
was shown in this barbarity! You would not suffer any liv- 
ing being to divulge the mysteries of your bed; the words 
of love which had escaped your lips should not be re- 
peated. Thus you preserved your pure delusion. Ex- 
perience came not to strip piecemeal the charming phan- 
tom that you had cradled in your arms. You preferred 
to be separated from him by blow of axe rather than 
by slow distaste. 

“ What torture, in fact, it is to see the man whom you 
have chosen false every minute to the idea you had 


248 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


formed of him; to discover a thousand littlenesses in his 
character which you had not suspected; to perceive that 
what had appeared so beautiful to you through the prism 
of love is really very ugly, and that he whom you took 
for a true hero of romance is after all, only a prosaic 
citizen who wears dressing-gown and slippers! 

“ I have not Cleopatra’s power, and if I had, I should 
assuredly not possess the energy to make use of it. 
Hence, being unable or unwilling to cut off the heads of 
my lovers as they leave my salon, and being, further, 
indisposed to endure what other women endure, I must 
look twice before taking one; I shall do so three times 
rather than twice if I feel any inclination in that direction, 
which is doubtful enough after what I have seen and 
heard; unless, in some happy unknown land, I meet with 
a heart like my own, as the romances say — a virgin heart 
and pure, which has never loved, and which is capable of 
doing so in the true sense of the word — by no means an 
easy matter. 

“Several gentlemen entered the inn; the storm and 
darkness had prevented them from continuing their jour- 
ney. They were all young, and the eldest was certainly 
not more than thirty. Their dress showed that they be- 
longed to the upper classes, and without their dress the 
insolent ease of their manners would have readily made 
this understood. One or two of them had interesting 
faces; the others all displayed, to a greater or less degree, 
that species of brutal joviality and careless good-nature 
which men have among themselves, and which they lay 
aside completely when in our presence. 

“If they could have suspected that the frail young man, 
half asleep in his chair at the corner of the fire-place, 
was anything but what he appeared to be, and was really 
a young girl, and fit for a king, as they say, they would 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


249 


certainly have quickly changed their tone, and you would 
immediately have seen them bridling up and making a 
display. They would have approached with many bows, 
their legs cambered, their Elbows turned out, and a smile 
in their eyes, on their lips, in their nose, in their hair, and 
in their whole bodily appearance; they would have boned 
the words they made use of, and spoken to me only in 
velvet and satin phrases; at the least movement, on my 
part, they would have looked like stretching themselves 
over the floor after the manner of a carpet, lest the deli- 
cacy of my feet should be offended by its unevenness; all 
their hands would have been advanced to support me; 
the softest seat would have been prepared in the best 
place — but I looked like a pretty boy, and not like a 
pretty girl. 

“I confess that I was almost ready to regret my petti- 
coats when I saw what little attention they paid to me. 
For a minute I was quite mortified; for, from time to 
time, I forgot that I was wearing man’s clothes, and had to 
think of the fact in order to prevent myself from grow- 
ing cross. 

“There I was, not speaking a word, my arms folded, 
looking apparently with great attention at the chicken, 
which was assuming a more and more rosy-tinted com- 
plexion, and the unfortunate dog which I had so unluck- 
ily disturbed and which was striving in its wheel like 
several devils in the same holy- water basin. 

“The youngest of the set came up, and, giving me a 
clap on the shoulder, which, upon my word, hurt me a 
good deal, and drew a little involuntary cry from me, 
asked me whether I would not rather sup with them 
than quite by myself, seeing that the drinking would go 
on all the better for plenty of company. I replied that 
this was a pleasure I should not have dared to hope for, 


250 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


and that I should be very happy to do so. Our covers 
were then laid together, and we sat down to table. 

^‘The panting dog, after snapping up an enormous 
porringerful of water with three laps of his tongue, went 
back to his post opposite the other dog, which had not 
stirred any more than if he had been of porcelain, the 
new-comers, by Heaven’s special grace, not having 
asked for a chicken. 

“From some words which they let drop, I learned 
that they were repairing to the court, which was then at 

, where they were to join other friends of theirs. I 

told them that I was a gentleman’s son who was leaving 
the university and going to some relations in the country 
by the regular pupil’s road, namely, the longest he could 
find. This made them laugh, and after some remarks 
about my innocent and candid looks they asked me 
whether I had a mistress. I replied that I did not know, 
and they laughed still more. The bottles followed one 
another with rapidity; although I was careful to leave 
my glaas nearly always full, my head was somewhat 
heated, and not losing sight of my purpose, I brought 
the conversation round to women. This was not difficult; 
for, next to theology and aesthetics, they are the subject 
on which men are the readiest to talk when drunk. 

“My companions were not precisely drunk — they 
carried their wine too well for that — but they began to 
put their elbows unceremoniously on the table. One of 
them had even passed his arm around the thick waist of 
one of the serving- women, and was nodding his head in 
very amorous fashion. Another swore that he would 
instantly burst, like a toad that had been given snuff, if 
Jeannette would not let him take a kiss on each of the' 
big red apples which served her for cheeks; and Jean- 
nette, not wishing him to burst like a toad, presented 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


251 


them to him with a very good grace, and did not even 
arrest a hand that andaciously found its way through the 
folds of her neckerchief into the moist valley of her 
bosom, which was very imperfectly guarded by a little 
golden cross, and it was only after a short whispered 
parley that he let her go and take away the dish. 

‘‘ Yet they belonged to the court, and had elegant man- 
ners, and unless I had seen it, I should certainly never 
have thought of accusing them of such familiarities with 
the servants of an inn. Probably they had just left 
charming mistresses to whom they had sworn the finest 
oaths in the world. In truth, I should never have 
dreamed of charging my lover not to sully the lips on 
which I had laid my own along the cheeks of a trollop. 

‘^The rogue appeared to take great pleasure in this 
kiss, neither more nor less than if he had embracad 
Phyllis or Ariadne. It was a big kiss, solidly and frank- 
ly applied, which left two little white marks on the 
wench’s flaming cheek, and the trace of which she wiped 
away with the back of the hand that had just washed the 
plates and dishes. I do not believe that he ever gave so 
naturally tender a one to his heart’s pure deity. This 
was apparently his own thought, for he said in an under- 
tone, with quite a scornful movement of his elbow — 
^“To the devil with lean women and lofty sentiments !’ 
^'This moral appeared to suit the company, and they 
all wagged their heads in token of assent. 

^ Upon my word,’ said the other, following out his 
idea, ^ I am unfortunate in everything. Gentlemen, I 
must confide to you under the seal of the greatest secrecy, 
that I, I who am speaking to you, have at this moment 
a flame.’ 

^ Oh ! oh !’ said the others, ‘a flame ! That is lugu- 
brious to the last degree. And what do you do with a 
flame.’ 


252 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


‘She is a virtuous woman, gentlemen, you must not 
laugh, gentlemen ; for, after all, why should I not have 
a virtuous woman? Have I said anything ridiculous. 
Here ! you over there ! I will throw the house at your 
head if you are not quiet. ’ 

“‘Well! what next?’ 

“ ‘She is mad about me. She has the most beautiful 
soul in the world; in point of souls, I understand them — 
I understand them at least as well as I do horses, and I 
assure you that it is a soul of the first quality. There are 
elevations, ecstasies, devotions, sacrifices, refinements of 
tenderness, everything you can think of that is most 
transcendent; but she has scarcely any bosom, she has 
none at all, even like a little school girl of fifteen at most. 
She is otherwise pretty enough; her hand is delicate, and 
her foot small; she has two much mind and not enough 
flesh, and I often think of leaving her in the lurch. The 
devil! One can’t go to woo with minds. I am very un- 
fortunate; pity me, my dear friends.’ And affected by 
the wine that he had drunk, he began to weep bitterly. 

“‘Jeannette will console you for the misfortune of 
acting as lover to sylphins,’ said his neighbor, pouring 
him out a bumper; ‘ her soul is so thick that you might 
make bodies of it for other people, and she has flesh 
enough to clothe the carcasses of three elephants. ’ 

“O pure and noble woman! didst thou but know what 
is said at random of thee, in a tavern, and in the pres- 
ence of strangers, by the man whom thou lovest best in 
the world, and to whom thou has sacrificed everything! 
how he strips thee without shame, and impudently sur- 
renders thee in thy nakedness to the drunken gaze of his 
comrades, whilst thou art mournful yonder, thy chin in 
thy hand and thine eyes turned towards the road by 
which he is to return! 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


253 


‘^Had some one come and told thee that thy lover, 
twenty-four hours perhaps after leaving thee, was court- 
ing a base servant-girl, thou wouldst have maintained 
that it was impossible, and wouldst have refused to be 
lieve it; scarcely wouldst thou have trusted thine eyes 
and ears. Yet it was so. 

‘‘The conversation lasted some time longer, and was 
the maddest and most shameless in the world; but 
through all the facetious exaggeration and the often filthy 
jests, there was apparent a deep and genuine feeling of 
perfect contempt for women, and I learned more during 
that evening than by reading twenty cart-loads of moral- 
ists. 

“The monstrous and unheard-of things that .1 was 
listening to imparted a tinge of sadness and severity to 
my face, which the rest of the guests prceeived, and 
about which they teased me good-naturedly; but my 
gaiety could not return. I had, indeed, suspected that 
men were not such as they appeared to us, but yet I did 
not think that they were so different from their masks, 
and my disgust was not greater than my surprise. 

“I should require only half an hour of such conver- 
sation to cure a romantic young girl for ever; it would do 
her more good than any maternal remonstrances. 

“Some boasted of having as many women as they 
pleased, and that to do so cost them only a word; others 
communicated recipes for procuring mistresses, or en- 
larged upon the tactics to be pursued when laying siege 
to virtue; others aga,in ridiculed the women whose lovers 
they were, and proclaimed themselves the most arrant 
fools on earth to be attached, in this way, to such trulls. 
They all made light of love. 

“These, then, are the thoughts which they conceal 
from us beneath all their fair appearances! Who would 


254 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


ever think it, to see them so humble, so cringing, so 
ready to do anything? Ah! how hardily they raise their 
heads after their conquest, and insolently set the heel of 
their boot on the brow which they used to worship at a 
distance on their knees! what vengeance they take for 
their passing abasement! how dearly must their polite- 
ness be paid for! and through what many insults they re- 
pose after the madrigals they made! What mad brutal- 
ity of language and thought! what inelegance of manners 
and deportment! It is a complete change, and one which 
certainly is not to their advantage. However far my 
previsions might reach, they fell far short of the reality. 

‘‘Ideal, blue flower with heart of gold, blooming all 
pearly with dew beneath the sky of spring, in the scented 
breath of soft dreamings, whose fibrous roots, a thousand 
times more slender than fairies’ silken tresses, sink into 
the depths of our souls with their thousand hair-covered 
heads to drink in thence the purest substance; flower so 
sweet and so bitter, we cannot pluck thee forth without 
causing the heart to bleed in all its recesses; from the 
broken stem ooze red drops which, falling one by one into 
the lake of our tears serve to measure for us the limping 
hours of our death-watch by the bedside of expiring 
Love. 

“Ah ! cursed flower, how thou hadst sprung up in my 
soul ! thy branches had multiplied more than nettles in a 
ruin. The young nightingales came to drink from thy 
cup and sing beneath thy shade ; diamond butterflies, 
with emerald wings and ruby eyes, hovered and danced 
about thy frail gold-powdered pistils ; swarms of flaxen 
bees sucked thy poisonous honey without mistrust; 
chimeras folded their swan-like wings and crossed their 
lion claws beneath their beauteous throats to rest beside 
thee. The tree of the Hesperides was not better guard- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


255 


ed ; sylphids gathered the tears of the stars in the urns 
of the lilies, and watered thee each night with their ma- 
gic watering-vessels. 

Plant of the ideal, more venomous than the man- 
chineel or the upas tree, what it costs me, despite thy 
treacherous blossoms and the poison inhaled with thy 
perfume, to uproot thee from my soul ! Neither the 
cedar of Lebanon, nor the gigantic baobab, nor the palm 
a hundred cubits high, could together fill the place which 
thou didst occupy quite alone: little blue flower with 
heart of gold ! 

‘‘Supper came to an end at last, and we contemplated 
going to bed ; but, as the number of sleepers was 
double that of the beds, it naturally followed that we 
must go to bed in turn or else two together. It was a 
very simple matter for the rest of the company, but not 
so by any means for me, taking into account certain pro- 
tuberances which were disguised conveniently enough 
beneath vest and doublet, but which a simple shirt would 
have betrayed in all their damnable roundness ; and I 
was little disposed to disclose my incognito in favor of 
any of these gentlemen who at that moment appeared to 
me veritable and ingenuous monsters, though I after- 
wards found them very decent fellows, and worth at least 
as much as any of their species. 

“He with whom I was in bed was fairly drunk. He 
threw himself on the mattress, with one leg and arm 
hanging to the ground, and at once went to sleep, not 
the sleep of the just, but a sleep so profound that if 
the angel of the last judgment had come and blown his 
clarion in his ear he would have failed to wake him. 
Such a sleep greatly simplified the difficulty ; I took off 
nothing but my doublet and boots, strode over the 
sleeper’s body, and stretched myself on the sheets at the 
edge of the bed. 


256 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


curious situation indeed! It was not a bad be- 
ginning ! I confess that, in spite of all my assurance, I 
was singularly moved and troubled. The situation was 
so strange, so novel, that I could scarcely admit that it 
was not a dream. The other slept his best, but I could 
not close an eye the whole night. 

*‘He was a young man, about twenty-four years of 
age, with rather a handsome face, dark eyelashes, and a 
nearly blonde moustache ; his long hair rolled around 
his head like the waves from the inverted urn of a river- 
god, a light blush passed beneath his pale cheeks like a 
cloud beneath the water, his lips were half open and 
smiling with a vague and languid smile. 

raised myself upon my elbow, and remained a long 
time watching him by the flickering light of a candle, of 
which the tallow had nearly all run down in broad sheets, 
and the wick was laden with black wasters. 

^‘We were separated by a considerable interval. He 
occupied one extreme edge of the bed, while I, as an 
additional precaution, had thrown myself quite on the 
other. 

“What I had heard was assuredly not of a nature to 
predispose me to tenderness and voluptuousness ; I held 
men in abomination. Nevertheless I was more dis- 
quieted and agitated than I ought to have been ; my 
body did not share in the repugnance of my mind so 
completely as it should have done. My heart was beat- 
ing violently, I was hot, and on whatever side I turned 
I could not find repose. 

“The most profound silence reigned in the inn; you 
could only hear at wide intervals the dull noise caused by 
the hoof of some horse striking the stone-floor in the 
stable, or the sound of a drop of water falling upon the 
ashes through the shaft of the chimney. The candle, 
reaching the end of the wick, went out in smoke. 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 


257 


‘‘The densest darkness fell like a curtain between us. 
You cannot conceive the effect which the sudden disap- 
pearance of the light had upon me. It seemed to me as 
if all were ended, and I were never more to see clearly in 
my life. For a moment I wished to get up; but what 
could I have done ? It was only two o’clock in the morn- 
ing, all the lights were out, and I could not wander about 
like a phantom in a strange house. I was obliged to re- 
main where I was and wait for daylight. 

“There I was on my back, with both hands crossed, 
striving to think of something, and always coming back 
to this: my present predicament. I even went so 
far as to wish that he would awake and perceive that I 
was a woman. No doubt the wine that I had drunk, 
though sparingly, had something to do with this extraor- 
dinary idea, but I could not help recurring to it. I was 
on the point of stretching out my hand towards him, to 
wake him and tell him what I was. A fold in the bed- 
clothes which checked my arm was what prevented me 
from going through with it. Time was thus given me for 
reflection, and while I was freeing my arm, my senses, 
which I had altogether lost, came back to me, not en- 
tirely, perhaps, but sufficiently to restrain me. 

“How curious it would have been, if I, scornful beauty 
as I was, I who wished to be acquainted with ten years 
of a man’s life before giving him my hand to kiss, had 
surrendered to the first emotions of an inexperienced 
passion! and upon my word I was nearly doing it. 

“Can a sudden effervescence, a boiling of the blood, 
so completely subdue the most superb resolves ? Does 
the voice of the body speak in higher tones than the voice 
of the mind ? Whenever my pride sends too many puffs 
heavenwards, I bring the recollection of that night before 
its eyes to recall it to earth. I am beginning to be of a 

Maupin— 16 


25B MADEMOISELLE DE MADE/M 


man’s opinion; what a poor thing is a woman’s virtue! 
on what, good heavens, does it depend! 

‘‘Ah! it is vain to seek to spread one’s wings, they are 
laden too much with clay; the body is an anchor which 
holds back the soul to earth; fruitlessly does she open 
her sails to the wind of the loftiest ideas, the vessel re- 
mains motionless, as though all the remoras of the ocean 
were clinging to the keel. Nature takes pleasure in such 
sarcasms at our expense. When she sees a thought 
standing on its pride as on a lofty column, and nearly 
touching heaven wdth its head, she whispers to the red 
fluid to quicken its pace and crowd at the gates of the 
arteries; she commands the temples to sing and the ears 
to tingle, and, behold, dizziness seizes the proud idea. 
All images are blended and confused, the earth seems to 
undulate like the deck of a bark in a storm, the heavens 
turn round, and the stars dance a saraband; the lips 
which used to utter only austere maxims are wrinkled and 
put forward as though for kisses; the arms so firm to re- 
pel grow soft, and become more supple and entwining 
than scarves. Add to this contact with an epidermis and 
a breath across your hair, and all is lost. 

“Often even less is sufficient. A fragrance of foliage 
coming to you from the fields through your half-opened 
window, the sight of two birds billing each other, an open- 
ing daisy, an old love-song which returns to you in your 
own despite and which you repeat without understanding 
its meaning, a warm wind which troubles and intoxicates 
you, the softness of your bed or divan — one of these cir- 
cumstances is sufficient; even the solitude of your room 
makes you think that it would be comfortable for two, and 
that no more charming nest could be found for a brood 
of pleasures. The drawn curtains, the twilight, the si- 
lence, all bring back to you the fatal idea which brushes 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


259 


you with its dove-like wings and coos so sweetly about 
you. The tissues which touch you seem to caress you, 
and cling with amorous folds along your body. Then the 
young girl opens her arms to the first courtier with whom 
she finds herself alone; the philosopher leaves his page 
unfinished, and, with his head in his mantle, runs in all 
haste to the nearest wine cellar. 

‘‘T certainly did not love the man who was causing 
me such strange perturbations. He had no other charm 
than that he was not a woman, and, in the condition in 
which I found myself, this was enough ! A man ! that 
m 3 ^sterious thing which is concealed from us with so 
much care, that strange animal, of whose history we 
know so little, that demon or god who alone can realize 
all the dreams of vague voluptuousness wherewith the 
spring-time flatters our sleep, the sole thought that we 
have from fifteen years of age ! 

man! The confused notion of pleasure floated 
through my dulled head. The little that I knew of it 
kindled my desire still more. A burning curiosity urged 
me to clear up once for all the doubts which perplexed 
me, and were forever recurring to my mind. The solu- 
tion of the problem was over the leaf ; it was only neces- 
sary to turn it, the book was beside me. A handsome 
cavalier, a narrow bed, a dark night ! — a young girl with 
a few glasses of champagne in her head ! what a sus- 
picious combination 1 Well ! the result of it all was but 
a very virtuous nothingness. 

<‘On the wall, upon which I kept my eyes fixed, I 
began, in the diminishing darkness, to distinguish 
the position of the window ; the panes became less 
opaque, and the gray light of dawn, glancing behind 
them, restored their transparency; the sky brightened 
by degrees; it was day. You cannot imagine the 


26 o 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


pleasure given me by that pale ray of light on the green 
dye of the Aumale serge which surrounded the glorious 
battlefield whereon my virtue had triumphed over my 
desires ! It seemed to me as though it were my crown 
of victory. 

^^As to my companion, he had fallen out onto the 
ground 

I got up, adjusted my dress as soon as possible, and 
ran to the window ; I opened it, and the morning breeze 
did me good. I placed myself before the looking-glass 
in order to comb my hair, and was astonished at the 
paleness of my countenance, which I had believed to be 
purple. 

^^The others came in to see whether we were still 
asleep, and pushed their friend with their feet, who did 
not appear much surprised at finding himself where he 
was. 

‘‘The horses were saddled, and we set out again. 

“But this is enough for to-day. My pen will not 
write any more, and I do not want to mend it ; another 
time I will tell you the rest of my adventures ; mean- 
while, love me as I love you, well-named Graciosa, and 
do not, from what I have just told you, form too bad an 
opinion of my virtue.” 


CHAPTER XI 


^^Many things are tiresome. It is tiresome to pay 
back the money you have borrowed and become accus- 
tomed to look on as your own; it is tiresome to fondle 
to-day the woman you loved yesterday, it is tiresome to 
go to a house at the dinner-hour and find that the owners 
left for the country a month ago; it is tiresome to 
write a novel, and more tiresome to read one; it is tire- 
some to have a pimple on your nose and cracked lips on 
the day that you visit the idol of your heart; it is tire- 
some to wear facetious boots which smile on the pave- 
ment from every seam, and, above all, to harbor a 
vacuum behind the cobwebs in your pocket; it is tire- 
some to be a door-porter; it is tiresome to be an em- 
peror; it is tiresome to be yourself, and even to be some- 
one else; it is tiresome to go on foot because it hurts 
your corns, on horseback because it skins the antithesis 
of the front, in a coach because a big man infallibly 
makes a pillow of your shoulder, on the packet because 
you are sea-sick and vomit your entire self; it is tiresome 
to have winter because you shiver, and summer because 
you perspire; but the most tiresome thing on earth, in 
hell, or in heaven is assuredly a tragedy, unless it be a 
drama or a comedy. 

“It really makes my heart ache. What could be more 


262 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


silly and stupid ? Are not the great tyrants with voices 
like bulls, who stride across the stage from one wing to 
the other, making their hairy arms go like the wings of a 
windmill, and imprisoned in flesh-colored stockings, but 
sorry counterfeits of Bluebeard or Bogey! Their rodo- 
montades might make any one who could keep awake 
burst out laughing. 

Women who are unfortunate in love are not less 
ridiculous. It is diverting to see them advance, clad in 
black or white, with their hair weeping on their should- 
ers, sleeves weeping on their hands, and their bodies 
ready to leap from the corset like a fruit-stone pressed 
between the fingers; looking as if they were dragging 
the floor by the sole of their satin slippers, and, in their 
great impulses of passion spurning their trains backward 
with a little kick from their heel. The dialogue, composed 
exclusively of Oh! and Ah! which they cluck as they dis- 
play their feathers, is truly agreeable food and easy of 
digestion. Their princes are also very charming; they 
are only somewhat dark and melancholy, which does not, 
however, prevent them from being the best companions 
in the world or elsewhere. 

^‘As to comedy which is to correct manners, and which 
fortunately acquits itself badly enough of its task, the 
sermons of fathers and iterations of uncles are, to my 
mind, as wearisome on the stage as in real life. I am 
not of opinion that the number of fools should be doubled 
by the representation of them; there are quite enough of 
them as it is, thank heaven, and the race is not likely to 
come to an end. Where is the necessity of portraying 
somebody who has a pig’s snout or ox’s muzzle, and of 
gathering together the trash of a clown whom you would 
throw out of the window if he came into your house ? The 
image of a pedant is no more interesting than the pedant 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 263 


himself, and his reflection in a mirror does not make 
him the less a pedant. An actor who succeeded in imi- 
tating the attitudes and manners of cobblers to perfection 
would not amuse me more than a real cobbler. 

‘‘But there is a theatre which I love, a fantastic, ex- 
travagant, impossible theatre, in which the worthy pub- 
lic would pitilessly hiss from the first scene, for want of 
understanding a single word. 

“ It is a singular theatre. Glow-worms take the place 
of Argand lamps, and a scarabaeus, beating time with his 
antennae, is placed at the desk. The cricket takes his 
part; the nightingale is first flute; little sylphs issuing 
from the peas-blossom hold basses of citron-peel be- 
tween their pretty legs which are whiter than ivory, 
and with mighty power of arm move their bows, made 
with a hair from Titania’s eyelash, over strings of spiders’ 
thread, the little wig with its three hammers, which the 
scarabaeus conductor wears, quivers with pleasure and 
diffuses about it a luminous dust, so sweet is the har- 
mony and so well executed the overture! 

“A curtain of butterflies’ wings, more delicate than 
the interior pellicle of an egg, rises slowly after the 
three indispensable raps. The house is full of the souls 
of poets seated in stalls of mother-of-pearl, and watch- 
ing the performance through dewdrops set on the golden 
pistils of lilies. These are their opera-glasses. 

“The scenery is not like any known scenery; the 
country which it represents is as strange as was America 
before its discovery. The palette of the richest painter 
has not half the tones with which it is diapered. All is 
painted in odd and singular colors. The verditer, the 
blue-ash, the ultramarine, and the red and yellow lake 
are in profusion. 

<‘The sky, which is of a greenish-blue, is striped 


264 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UP IN 


zebra-wise with broad flaxen and tawny bands ; in the 
middle distance spare and slender trees wave their scanty 
foliage the color of dried roses ; the distance, instead of 
being drowned in its azure-tinted vapor, is of the most 
beautiful apple-green, and here and there escape spirals 
of golden smoke. A wandering ray hangs on the portal 
of a ruined temple or the spire of a tower. Towns full 
of bell-turrets, pyramids, domes, arcades, and ramps, 
are seated on the hills and reflected in crystal lakes ; 
large trees with broad leaves, deeply carved by the 
chisels of the fairies, inextricably entwine their trunks 
and branches to form the wings. Over their heads the 
clouds of heaven collect like snow-flakes, through their 
interstices the eyes of dwarfs and gnomes are seen to 
sparkle, and their tortuous roots sink into the soil like 
the finger of a giant-hand. The woodpecker keeps time 
as he taps them with his horny beak and emerald lizards 
bask in the sun on the moss at their foot. 

^^The mushroom looks on at the comedy with his hat 
on his head, like the insolent fellow that he is. The 
dainty violet stands up on her little tiptoes between two 
blades of grass, and opens her blue eyes wide to see the 
hero pass. 

^‘The bullfinch and the linnet lean down at the end 
of the boughs to prompt the actors in their parts. 

“Through the tall grasses, the lofty purple thistles 
and the velvet-leaved burdocks, wind, like silver snakes, 
brooks that are formed with the tears of stags at bay. 
At wide intervals anemones are seen shining on the turf 
like drops of blood, and daisies, like veritable duchesses, 
carrying high their heads laden with crowns of pearls. 

“The characters are of no time or country; they come 
and go without our knowing why or how; they neither 
eat nor drink, they dwell nowhere and have no occupa- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 265 


tion; tjiey possess neither lands, nor incomes nor houses; 
only sometimes they carry under their arm a little box 
full of diamonds as big as pigeons’ eggs; as they walk 
they do not shake a single drop of rain from the 
heads of the flowers nor raise a single grain of the dust 
on the roads. 

Their dress is the most extravagant and fantastical 
in the world. Pointed steeple-shaped hats with brims 
as broad as a Chinese parasol and immoderate plumes 
plucked from the tails of the bird of paradise and the 
phoenix; cloaks striped with brilliant colors, doublets of 
velvet and brocade, letting the satin or silver-cloth lining 
be seen through their gold laced slashings; hose puffed 
and swollen like balloons; scarlet stockings, with em- 
broidered clocks, shoes with high heels and large ro- 
settes; little slender swords; with the point in the air and 
the hilt depressed, covered with chords and ribbons — so 
for the men. 

‘‘The women are no less curiously accoutred. 

“The drawings of Della Bella and Remain de Hooge 
might serve to represent the character of their attire. 
There are stuffed, undulating robes with great folds, 
whose colors play like those on the necks of turtle doves, 
and reflect all the changing tints of the iris, large sleeves 
whence other sleeves emerge, ruffs of open-slashed lace 
rising higher than the head which they serve to frame, 
corsets laden with knots and embroideries, aiglets, 
strange jewels, crests of heron plumes, necklaces of big 
pearls, fans formed from the peacock’s tail with mirrors 
in the centre, little slippers and pattens, garlands of ar- 
tificial flowers, spangles, wire-worked gauzes, paint, 
patches, and everything that can add flavor and piquan- 
cy to a theatrical toilette. 

“It is a style which is not precisely English, nor Ger- 


266 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


man, nor French, nor Turkish, nor Spanish, nor Tartar, 
though it partakes somewhat of all these, and is one 
which has adopted what is most graceful and character- 
istic from every country. Actors dressed in this manner 
may say what they will without doing violence to prob- 
ability. Fancy may rove in all directions, style may at 
its ease unroll its diapered rings like a snake basking in 
the sun; the most exotic conceits may fearlessly spread 
their singular flower-cups and diffuse around them their 
perfume of amber and musk. N othing hinders it — neither 
places, nor names, nor costume. 

‘^How amusing and charming are their utterances! 
They are not such actors as contort their mouths and 
make their eyes start out of their heads in order to de- 
spatch their tirade with effect like our dramatic howlers; 
they, at least, have not the appearance of workmen at 
their task, or of oxen yoked to the action and hastening 
to get done with it; they are not plastered with chalk 
and rouge half an inch thick; they do not carry tin dag- 
gers nor keep a pig’s bladder filled with chicken’s blood 
in reserve beneath their cloaks; they do not trail the 
same oil-stained rags through the entire acts. 

^‘They speak without hurry or clamor, like well-bred 
people who attach no great importance to what they are 
doing; the lover makes his declaration with the easiest 
air in the world; he taps his thigh with the tip of his 
white glove, or adjusts the leg of his trousers while he is 
speaking; the lady carelessly shakes the dew from her 
bouquet and exchanges witticisms with her attendant; 
the lover takes very little trouble to soften his cruel fair; 
his principal business is to drop clusters of pearls and 
bunches of roses from his lips, and to scatter poetic gems 
like a true spendthrift; often he effaces himself entirely, 
and lets the author court his mistress in his stead. Jeal- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


267 


ousy is no fault of his, and he is of the most accommo- 
dating disposition. With his eyes raised to the flies and 
friezes of the theatre, he complacently waits until the 
poet has finished saying what has taken his fancy, to re- 
sume his part and place himself again upon his knees. 

All is woven and unwoven with admirable careless- 
ness; effects have no causes, and causes no effects; the 
the most witty character is he who says most absurdities; 
the most foolish says the wittiest things; young girls talk 
in a way that would make courtesans blush, and courte- 
sans utter maxims of morality. The most unheard-of 
adventures follow one after another without any explana- 
tion; the noble father arrives from China in a bamboo 
junk expressly to recognize a little girl who has been 
carried off; gods and fairies do nothing but ascend and 
descend in their machines. The action plunges into the 
sea beneath the topaz dome of the waves, traversing the 
bottom of the ocean through forests of coral and madre- 
pore, or rises to heaven on the wings of lark or griffin. 

<‘The dialogue is most universal; the lion contributes 
a vigorously uttered oh! oh! — the wall speaks through its 
chinks, and provided he has a witticism, rebus, or pun to 
interpose, any one is free to interrupt the most interesting 
scene; the ass’s head of Bottom is as welcome as the 
golden head of Ariel’s; the authors mind may be dis- 
cerned beneath every form, and all these contradictions 
are like so many facets which reflect its different aspects 
while imparting to it the colors of the prism. 

‘^This apparent pell-mell and disorder succeeds after 
all in representing real life with more exactness in its 
fantastic presentations than the most minutely studied 
drama of manners. Every man comprises the whole of 
humanity within himself, and by writing what comes into 
his head, he succeeds better than by copying through a 
magnifying glass objects which are external to him. 


268 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


‘^What a glorious family! young romantic lovers, 
roaming damsels, serviceable attendants, caustic buf- 
foons, artless valets and peasants, gracious kings, whose 
names and kingdoms are unknown to historian and 
geographer; motely graciosos, clowns with sharp re- 
partees and miraculous capers; O you who give utterance 
to free caprice through your smiling lips, I love you and 
adore you among and above all others; Perdita, Rosa- 
lind, Celia, Pandarus, Parolles, Silvio, Leander, and the 
rest, all those charming types, so false and so true, who, 
in the checkered wings of folly soar above gross reality 
and in whom the poet personifies his joy, his melan- 
choly, his love, and his most intimate dream beneath the 
frivolous and flippant appearances. 

“Among these plays which were for the fairies, and 
should be performed by the light of the moon, there is 
one piece which principally delights me — a piece so 
wondering, so vagrant, with so vaporous a plot and such 
singular characters, that the author himself, not knowing 
what title to give it, has called it ‘As You Like It,’ an 
elastic name which satisfies every requirement. 

“When reading this strange piece, you feel that you 
are transported into an unknown world, of which, how- 
ever, you have some vague recollection; you can no 
longer tell whether you are dead or alive, dreaming or 
awake; pleasant faces smile sweetly on you, and give as 
they pass you a kindly good-day; you feel moved and 
troubled at the sight of them, as though at the turn of a 
road you had suddenly met with your ideal, or the for- 
gotten phantom of your first mistress had suddenly stood 
before you. Springs flow murmuring half-subdued com- 
plaints; the wind stirs the old trees of the ancient forest 
over the head of the aged exiled duke with compassion- 
ate sighs; and, when the melancholy Jacques gives his 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 269 


philosophic griefs to the stream with the leaves of the 
willow, it seems to you as though you were yourself the 
speaker, and the most obscure and secret thoughts of 
your heart were illumined and revealed. 

young son of the brave knight Rowland des Bois, 
so ill-used by fate! I cannot but be jealous of thee; thou 
hast still a faithful servant the good Adam, whose old 
age is so green beneath the snow of his hair. Thou art 
banished, but not at least until thou hast wrestled and 
triumphed; thy wicked brother robs thee of all thine es- 
tate, but Rosalind gives thee the chain from her neck; 
thou art poor, but thou art loved; thou leavest the coun- 
try, but the daughter of thy persecutor follows thee be- 
yond the seas. 

^‘The dark Ardennes open their great arms of foliage 
to receive thee and conceal thee; the good forest, in the 
depths of its grottos, heaps its most silky moss to form 
thy couch; it stoops its arches above thy brow to pro- 
tect thee from rain and sun; it pities thee with the tears 
of its springs and the sighs of its belling fawns and deer; 
it makes of its rocks kindly desks for thy amorous epist- 
les; it lends thee thorns from its bushes wherewith to 
hang them, and commands the satin bark of its aspen 
trees to yield to the point of thy stiletto when thou 
wouldst grave thereon the character of Rosalind. 

If only it were possible, young Orlando, to have like 
thee a great and shady forest that one might retire and 
be alone in his pain, and, at the turning of a walk meet 
the sought for she, recognizable though disguised! But 
alas! the world of the soul has no verdant Ardennes, and 
only in the garden of poetry bloom the wild, capricious 
little flowers whose perfume gives complete forgetfulness. 
In vain do we shed tears; they form not those fair silvery 
cascades; in vain do we sigh; no kindly echo troubles to 


270 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


return us our complaints graced with assonances and con- 
ceits. Vainly do we hang sonnets on the prickles of 
every bramble; Rosalind never gathers them, and it is 
for nothing that we gash the bark of the trees with amor- 
ous characters. 

Birds of the sky lend me each a feather, swallow no 
less than an eagle, and humming bird than roc, that I 
may make me a pair of wings to fly high and fast through 
regions unknown, where I may find nothing to bring 
back to my recollection the city of the living, where I 
may forget that I am myself, and live a life strange and 
new, farther than America, than Africa, than Asia, than 
the last island of the world, through the ocean of ice, 
beyond the poles where trembles the aurora borealis, in 
the impalpable kingdom whither the divine creations of 
the poets and the types of supreme beauty take their 
flight. 

^ How is it possible to sustain ordinary conversations 
in clubs and drawing-rooms after hearing thee speak, 
sparkling Mercutio, whose every phrase bursts in gold 
and silver rain like a firework shell beneath a star-strewn 
sky ? Pale Desdemona, what pleasure wouldst thou have 
us take in any terrestrial music after the romance of the 
Willow? What women seem not ugly beside your 
Venuses, ancient sculptors, poets in marble strophes? 

^^Ah! despite the furious embrace with which I wished 
to clasp the material world for lack of the other, I feel 
that I have an evil nature, that life was not made for me, 
and that it repulses me; I cannot concern myself with 
anything; whatever road I follow I go astray; the smooth 
alley and the stony path alike lead me to the abyss. If 
I wish to take my flight the air condenses about me, and 
I am caught with my wings spread and unable to close 
them. I can neither walk nor fly; the sky attracts me 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


271 


when I am on the earth, and the earth when I am in the 
sky; above, the north wind tears away my plumes; be- 
low, the pebbles wound my feet. My soles are too tender 
to walk upon the broken glass of reality; my wings of too 
short a span to soar above things, and rise from circle to 
circle into the azure depths of mysticism, even to the in- 
accessible summits of eternal love; I am the most un- 
fortunate hippogriff, the most wretched heap of hetero- 
geneous pieces that ever existed, since ocean first loved 
the moon and man was deceived by woman; the mon- 
strous Chimaera slain by Bellerophon, with its maiden’s 
head, lion’s paws, goat’s body, and dragon’s tail, was an 
animal of simple composition in comparison with me. 

‘^Inmy frail breast dwell together the violet-strewn 
dreamings of the chaste young girl and the mad burnings 
of revelling courtesans; my desires go, like lions, sharpen- 
ing their claws in the shade and seeking for something to 
devour; my thoughts, more feverish and restless than 
goats, cling to the most menacing crests; my hatred, 
poison-puffed, twists its scaly folds in inextricable knots, 
and drags itself at length through ruts and ravines. 

strange land is my soul, a land flourishing and 
splendid in appearance, but more saturated with putrid 
and deleterious nuisances than the land of Batavia; the 
least ray of sunshine on the slime causes reptiles to hatch 
and mosquitoes to swarm; the large yellow tulips, the 
nagassaris and the angsoka flowers pompously veil un- 
clean carrion. The amorous rose opens her scarlet lips, 
and smiling shows her little dewdrop teeth to the wooing 
nightingales who repeat madrigals and sonnets to her; 
nothing could be more charming; but the odds are a 
hundred to one that there is a dropsical toad in the grass 
beneath the bushes, crawling on limping feet and silver- 
ing his path with his slime. 


272 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


There are paths more limpid and clear than the 
purest diamond; but it would be better for you to draw 
the stagnant water of the marsh beneath its cloak of rot- 
ten rushes and drowned dogs than to dip your cup in 
such a wave. A serpent is hidden at the bottom, and 
wheels round with frightful quickness as he discharges 
his venom. 

‘‘You planted wheat, and there springs up asphodel, 
henbane, darnel, and pale hemlock with verigris branches. 
Instead of the root which you buried, you are astonished 
to see emerging from the earth the hairy, twisted limbs 
of the dark mandragora. 

“If you leave a souvenir, and should come to take it 
again some time afterwards, you will find it greener with 
moss and more abounding with woodlice and disgusting 
insects than a stone placed on the dank floor of a cave. 

“Seek not to cross its dark forests; they are more im- 
practicable than the virgin forests of America or the 
jungles of Java, Creepers, strong as cables, run from 
one tree to another; plants bristling and pointed like 
spear-heads obstruct every passage; the grass itself is 
covered with a scorching down like that of the nettle. 
To the arches of foliage gigantic bats of the vampire kind 
cling by their claws; scarabees of enormous size shake 
their threatening horns and lash the air with their quad- 
ruple wings; monstrous and fantastic animals, such as 
are seen passing in nightmares, advance painfully break- 
ing the reeds before them. There are troops of elephants 
crushing the flies between the wrinkles of their dried 
skin or rubbing their flanks along the stones and trees, 
rhinoceroses with rugose carapace, hippopotami with 
swollen muzzle and bristling hair, which, as they go, 
knead the mud and detritus of the forest with their broad 
foot. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


273 


^‘In the glades, yonder where the sun thrusts in a 
luminous ray like a wedge of gold, across the dank humid- 
ity, at the place where you would have wished to seat 
yourself, you will always find some family of tigers care- 
lessly couched, breathing the air through their sea-green 
eyes and glossing their velvety fur with their blood-red, 
papillae-covered tongues; or, it may be, a knot of boa 
serpents half asleep and digesting the bull they swal- 
lowed last. 

Dread everything — grass, fruit, water, air, shadow, 
sun, everything is mortal. 

Close your ear to the chatter of the little paroquets 
with golden beak and emerald neck, which descend from 
the trees and come and perch on your finger with throbbing 
wings; for the little emerald-necked paroquets will finish 
by prettily putting out your eyes with their golden beaks 
at the moment that you are bending down to kiss them. 
So it is! 

'^The world will have none of me; it repulses me as a 
spectre escaped from the tombs, and I am nearly as pale 
as one. My blood refuses to believe that I am alive, and 
will not color my skin; it creeps slowly through my veins 
like stagnant water in obstructed canals. My hearts 
beats for nothing which causes the heart of man to beat. 
My griefs and joys are not those of my fellow-creatures. 
I have vehemently desired what nobody desires; I have 
scorned things which are madly longed for. I have loved 
women when they did not love me, and I have been 
loved when I would fain have been hated. Always too 
soon or too late, more or less, on this side or on that; 
never what ought to have been; either I have not ar- 
rived, or I have been too far. I have flung my life 
through the windows, or concentrated it upon a single 
point, and from the restless activity of the ardelio I have 

Maupin— 17 


274 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


come to the somnolence of the teriaki and the stylite on 
his column. 

What I do has always the appearance of a dream; 
my actions seem to be the result rather of somnam- 
bulism than of a free-will; there is something within me 
which I feel vaguely at a great depth, and which causes 
me to act without my own participation and always in- 
dependently of general laws; the simple and natural side of 
things is never revealed to me until after all the others, 
and at first I always fasten upon what is eccentric and 
odd. However slightly the line may slant I soon make 
it into a spiral more twisted than a serpent; outlines, if 
they are not fixed in the most precise manner, become 
donfused and distorted. Faces assume a supernatural 
air, and look at you with frightful eyes. 

‘ ‘ Thus, by a species of instinctive reaction, I have al- 
ways clung desperately to matter, to the external silhou- 
ette of things, and in art have always given a very im- 
portant place to the plastic. I understand a statue per- 
fectly, while I cannot understand a man; where life be- 
gins, I stop and shrink back affrighted, as though I had 
seen Medusa’s head. The phenomenon of life causes me 
an astonishment which I cannot overcome. No doubt 
I shall make an excellent dead man, for I am a very poor 
living one, and the sense of my existence completely es- 
capes me. The sound of my voice surprises me to an 
unimaginable degree, and I might be tempted sometimes 
to take it for the voice of another. When I wish to 
stretch forth my arm, and my arm obeys me, the fact 
seems quite a prodigious one to me, arid I sink into the 
profoundest stupefaction. 

*‘On the other hand, Silvio, I have a perfect compre- 
hension of the unintelligible; the most extravagant 
notions seem quite natural to me, and I enter into them 


275 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 

with singular facility. I can find with ease the connection 
of the most capricious and disordered nightmare. This 
is the reason why the kind of pieces I was just speaking 
to you about please me beyond all others. 

We have great discussions on this subject with Theo- 
dore and Rosette. Rosette has little liking for my sys- 
tem, she is for the true truth; Theodore gives more lati- 
tude to the poet and admits a conventional and optical 
truth; for my part, I maintain that the author must have 
a clear stage and that fancy should reign supreme. 

^^Many of the company grounded their arguments 
chiefly on the fact that such pieces were, as a general 
rule, independent of theatrical conditions and could not 
be performed; I replied that this was true in one sense 
and false in another, like nearly everything that is said, 
and that ideas entertained respecting scenic possibilities 
and impossibilities appeared to me to be wanting in 
exactness, and to be the result rather of prejudices 
than of reason. Among other things, I said that the 
piece ‘As You Like It’ was assuredly most presentable, 
especially for people in society who were not practiced 
in other parts. 

“This suggested the idea of performing it. The sea- 
son is advancing and we have exhausted every description 
of amusement; we are tired of hunting, and of parties on 
horseback, or on the water; the chances of boston, varied 
as they are, have not piquancy enough to fill up an even- 
ing, and the proposal was received with universal en- 
thusiasm. 

“ A young man who knew how to paint volunteered to 
make the scenery; he is working at it now with much 
ardor, and in a few days it will be finished. The stage is 
erected in the orangery, which is the largest hall in the 
mansion, and I think everything will turn out well. I am 


276 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


taking the part of Orlando, and Rosette was to have 
played Rosalind — which was a most proper arrangement. 
As my mistress, and the mistress of the house, the part 
fell to her of right; but owing to a caprice singular enough 
in her, prudery not being one of her faults, she would 
not disguise herself as a man. Had I not been sure of 
the contrary, I should have believed that her legs were 
badly shaped. Actually none of the ladies of the party 
would show herself less scrupulous than Rosette, and this 
nearly caused the failure of the piece; but Theodore, 
who had taken the part of the melancholy Jacques, offered 
to replace her, seeing that Rosalind is a cavalier nearly 
the whole time, except in the first act where she was a 
woman, and that with paint, corset, and dress he will be 
able to effect the illusion sufficiently well, having as 
yet no beard, and being of a very slight figure. 

‘‘We are engaged in learning our parts, and it is some- 
thing to see us. In every solitary nook in the park you 
are sure to find some one, paper in hand, muttering 
phrases in a whisper, raising his eyes to heaven, suddenly 
casting them down, repeating the same gesture seven or 
eight times. If it were not known that we are to perform 
a comedy, we should assuredly be taken for a houseful of 
lunatics or poets (which is almost a pleonasm). 

‘ ‘ I think that we shall soon know enough to have a rehear- 
sal. I am expecting something very singular. Perhaps I 
am wrong. I was afraid for a moment that instead of play- 
ing by inspiration our actors would endeavor to reproduce 
the attitudes and voice-inflections of some fashionable 
performer; but fortunately they have not watched the 
stage with sufficient accuracy to fall into this inconven- 
ience, and it is to be expected that, through the awk- 
wardness of people who have never trod the boards, they 
will display precious flashes of nature and that charming 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


277 

ingenuousness which the most consumate talent cannot 
reproduce. 

Our young painter has truly wrought wonders. It 
would be impossible to give a stranger shape to the old 
trunks of trees and the ivy which entwines them; he has 
taken pattern by those in the park, accentuating and ex- 
aggerating them as is necessary for the stage. Every- 
thing is expressed with admirable boldness and caprice; 
stones, rocks, clouds, are of a mysteriously grimacing 
form; mirror-like reflections play on the trembling waters 
which are less stable than quicksilver, and the ordinary 
coldness of the foliage is marvellously relieved by saffron 
tints dashed in by the brush of autumn: the forest varies 
from emerald green to cornelian purple; the warmest and 
the freshest tones show harmoniously together, and the 
sky itself passes from the softest blue to the most burning 
of colors. 

^^He has designed all the costumes after my instruc- 
tions, and they are of the handsomest description. At 
first the performers cried that they could not be produced 
in silk or velvet nor in any known material, and I nearly 
saw the moment when troubadour costume was to be 
generally adopted. The ladies said that glaring colors 
would eclipse their eyes. To which we replied that 
their eyes were stars which were perfectly inextinguish- 
able, and that on the contrary it was their eyes that 
would eclipse the colors, and even, if need were, the Ar- 
gand lamps, the lustre, and the sun. They had no reply 
to this; but there were other objections which kept spring- 
ing up in a bristling crowd like the Lernean hydra; no 
sooner was the head of one cut off than another more 
stupid would arise. 

‘ How do you think this will keep together? ’ — Ht 
is all very well on paper, but it is another matter when 


278 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


on one’s back; I shall never be able to get into that! ’ — 
^My petticoat is at least four finger-lengths too short; I 
shall never dare to show myself in that disguise! ’ — ‘This 
ruff is too high; I look as if I were a hunchback and had 
no neck.’ — ‘This headdress makes me look intolerably 
old.’ 

“ ‘With starch, pins, and good-will everything will 
hold.’ — ‘You are joking! a waist like yours, more frail 
than a wasp’s, and one which would go through the 
ring on my little finger! I will wager twenty-five louis to 
a kiss that it will be necessary to take in this bodice! ’ — 
‘Your petticoat is very far from being too short, and if 
you knew what an adorable leg you have, you would most 
certainly be of my opinion.’ — ‘ On the contrary, your neck 
stands out and is admirably set off by its aureola of lace.’ 
— ‘This headdress does not make you look old in the 
least, and, even if you appeared to be a few years older, 
you are so extremely young that this ought to be a matter 
of perfect indifference to you; indeed, you would give us 
grounds for strange suspicions if we did not know where 
the pieces of your last doll are ’ — etc. 

“You cannot imagine what a prodigious quantity of 
madrigals we were obliged to dispense in order to com- 
pel our ladies to put on charming costumes which were 
most becoming to them. 

“We found it equally troublesome to induce them to 
place their patches in an appropriate manner. What a 
devil of a taste women have! and what Titanic obstinacy 
possesses a vaporish, foppish woman who believes that 
glazed straw-yellow suits her better than jonquil or bright 
rose-color. I am sure that if I had devoted to public 
affairs half the artifices and intrigues that I have em- 
ployed in order to have a red feather placed on the left 
and not on the right, I should be a minister of state or 
emperor at the least. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


279 


‘‘What a pandemonium! what an enormous and inex- 
tricable rout must a real theatre be! 

“From the time that the performance of a comedy 
was first spoken of, everything here has been in the 
most complete disorder. All the drawers are opened, all 
the wardrobes emptied; it is genuine pillage. Tables, 
easy-chairs, consoles, everything is littered, and a person 
does not know where to set his foot. Trailing about the 
house are prodigious quantities of dresses, mantelets, 
veils, petticoats, cloaks, caps, and hats; and when you 
think that all these are to be arranged on the bodies of 
seven or eight persons, you involuntarily think of those 
mountebanks at the fair who wear eight or ten coats one 
over another, and 57^ou find it impossible to conceive 
that the whole of this heap will only furnish one costume 
for each. 

“The servants are constantly coming and going; there 
are always two or three on the road from the mansion to 
the town, and if this continues all the horses will become 
broken winded. 

“A theatrical manager has no time to be melancholy, 
and I have seldom been so for some time past. I am so 
deafened and overwhelmed that I am beginning to lose 
all understanding of the piece. As I support the charc- 
ter of impresario as well as that of Orlando, my task is a 
twofold one. When any difficulty arises recourse is had 
to me, and a'^s my decisions are not always listened to as 
oracles, they degenerate into interminable discussions. 

“ If what is called living is to be always on one’s legs, 
to be equal to twenty persons, to go up and down stairs 
and not to think for a minute during the day, I have 
never lived so much as during this week. Nevertheless, 
I have a smaller share in this animation than might be 
believed. The agitation is very shallow, and the stag- 


28 o 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


nant, unflowing water might be found a few fathoms be- 
low; life does not penetrate me so readily as that, and 
my vitality is even the smallest when I seem to be work- 
ing and engaging in what is going on. Action dulls and 
fatigues me to an extent which is inconceivable; when I 
am not employed actively, I think or at least dream, and 
this is a sort of existence, but I lose it as soon as I emerge 
from my porcelain-image repose. 

^‘Up to the present I have don-e nothing, and I do not 
know whether I shall ever do anything. I cannot check 
my brain, which is all the difference between a man of 
talent and a man of genius; it is an endless boiling, wave 
urging wave; I cannot master this species of internal jet 
which rises from my heart to my head, and for want of 
outlets, drowns all my thoughts. I can produce nothing, 
owing not to sterility, but to superabundance; my ideas 
spring up so thick-set and close that they are stifled and 
cannot ripen. Never will execution, however rapid and 
impetuous it may be, attain |o such a velocity. When I 
write a phrase, the thought which it represents is already 
as far distant from me as though a century had elapsed 
instead of a second, and it often happens that in spite of 
myself I mingle with it something of the thought 
which has taken its place in my head. 

^^This is why I cannot live, whether as a poet or as a 
lover. I can only give out the ideas which have left me; 
I have women only when I have forgotten them, and am 
loving others — a man, how can I bring forth my wish to 
light since, hasten as I may, I lose the consciousness of 
what I do, and act only in accordance with a feeble rem- 
iniscence? 

‘‘To come upon a thought in a vein of your brain, to 
take it out rude at first like a block of marble as it is got 
from the quarry, to set it before you and, with chisel in one 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


281 


hand and a hammer in the other, to knock, cut, and scrape 
from morning till evening, and then carry off at night a 
pinch of dust to throw upon your writing — that is what I 
shall never be able to do. 

^‘In an idea I can separate the slender form from the 
coarse block very well, and have a very clear vision of it; 
but there are so many angles to knock away, so many 
splinters to make fly, so many strokes of rasp and ham- 
mer to be given in order to come near to the shape and 
lay hold on the just sinuousity of contour, that my hands 
become blistered, and I let my chisel fall to the ground. 

^^If I persevere, the fatigue reaches to such a degree 
that my inmost sight is totally darkened, and I can no 
longer distinguish through the cloud of marble the fair 
divinity which is concealed within its thickness. Then I 
pursue her at random and in a groping fashion; I bite too 
deeply into one place, and do not go far enough into 
another; I take away what ought to have been a leg or 
an arm, and leave a compact mass where there ought to 
have been a void; instead of a goddess I make a gro- 
tesque, and sometimes even less, and the magnificent 
block drawn at so great an expense and with so much toil 
from the entrails of the earth, hammered, cut, and hol- 
lowed out in all directions, looks more as if it had been 
gnawed and perforated by polyps to make a hive than 
fashioned by a statuary after a settled design. 

^^How dost thou contrive, Michael Angelo, to cut the 
marble in slices as a child carves a chestnut? of what 
steel were thine unconquered chisels formed ? and what 
sturdy sides sustained you, all ye fertile artists and 
workers, whom no matter can resist, and who can cause 
your dream to flow entire into color and bronze ? 

It is in a fashion an innocent and permissible vanity, 
after the cruel things that I have just told you of myself, 


282 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


and you will not be one to blame me for it, O Silvio! — 
but, though the universe be destined to know nothing of 
it, and my name be beforehand devoted to oblivion, I am 
a poet and a painter! I have had as beautiful ideas as 
any poet in the world; I have created types as pure and 
as divine as those that are most admired in the masters. 
I see them there before me as clear and as distinct as 
though they were really depicted, and were I able to open 
up a hole in my head, and place a glass in it to be looked 
through, there would be the most marvellous picture 
gallery that was ever seen. No earthly king can boast 
the possession of such a one. There are Rubenses as 
flaming and bright as the purest Antwerp; my Raphaels 
are in the best state of preservation, and his Madonnas 
have no more gracious smiles; Buonarotti cannot contort 
a muscle in a bolder and more terrible fashion; the sun of 
Venice shines upon the canvas as though it were ‘Paulus 
Cagliari;’ the shadows of Rembrandt himself are heaped 
in the background of that frame where in the distance 
there trembles a pale star of light; the pictures wrought 
in the manner peculiar to myself would assuredly be 
scorned by none. 

I am quite aware that it looks strange to me to say 
this, and that I shall appear giddy with the coarse intoxi- 
cation of the most foolish pride; but it is so, and nothing 
will shake m'y conviction of it. No one doubtless will 
share it; what then? Every one is born marked with a 
black or white seal. Mine apparently is black. 

‘‘Sometimes, even, I have difficulty in covering up my 
thought sufficiently in this respect; it often happens that 
I speak too familiarly of these lofty geniuses whose 
footsteps should be adored, and whose statues should be 
contemplated from afar and on the knees. Once I for- 
got myself so far as to say ‘ We.’ Happily it was before 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


283 


a person who did not notice it, else I should infallibly 
have been taken for the most enormous coxcomb that 
ever lived. 

am 7X. poet and a painter, Silvio; am I not ? 

‘‘It is a mistake to believe that all those who have 
passed for having genius were really greater men than 
others. It is unknown how much was contributed to 
Raphael’s reputation by the pupils and obscure painters 
whom he employed in his works; he gave his signature 
to the soul and talents of many — that is all. 

“A great painter or a great writer occupies and fills 
by himself a whole century; his only care is to invade all 
styles at once, so that if a rival should start up he may 
accuse him at the very outset of plagiarism and check 
him at the first step in his career. These are well-known 
tactics, and though not new, succeed none the less every 
day. 

“It may happen that a man who is already celebrated 
has precisely the same sort of talent that you would have 
had. Under penalty of being thought to copy him, you 
are obliged to turn aside your natural inspiration and 
cause it to take a different direction. You were born to 
blow full-mouthed on the heoric clarion or to evoke 
the wan phantoms of times that are no more, and you 
are obliged to play your fingers on the seven-holed flute 
or to make knots on a sofa in the recesses of some bou- 
doir, simply because your father did not take the trouble 
to cast you in a mould eight or ten years sooner, and the 
world does not understand that two men may cultivate 
the same field. 

“It is in this way that many noble intellects have been 
forced to take wittingly a path which is not theirs, and to 
keep for ever along borders of their own domain from 
which they have been banished, happy still to cast a 


284 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


glance by stealth over the hedge, and to see on the other 
side blooming in the sun the beautiful variegated flowers 
which they possess as seeds but cannot sow for lack of 
soil. 

^‘As regards myself, I do not know whether — apart 
from the greater or less opportuneness of circumstances, 
the greater or less amount of air and sun, the door which 
remained closed and which ought to have been opened, 
the meeting lost, the somebody whom I ought to have 
known and whom I have not known— I should have ever 
attained to anything. 

have not the necessary degree of stupidity to be- 
come what is absolutely called a genius^ nor the enor- 
mous obstinacy which is afterwards deified under the fine 
name of ^ will, ’when the great man has arrived at the 
radiant mountain- top, and which is indispensable for 
reaching the latter; I am not too well acquainted with 
the hollowness of all things and the rottenness that is in 
them, to cling for very long to any one of them and pur- 
sue it eagerly and solely through thick and thin. 

“Men of genius are very narrow-minded, and it is on 
this account that they are men of genius. The want of 
intelligence prevents them from perceiving the obstacles 
which separate them from the object which they desire to 
reach; they go, and in two or three strides devour the 
intermediate spaces. As their minds are obstinately 
closed to certain courses, and they notice only such things 
as are most immediately connected with their projects, 
they make a smaller outlay of thought and action. 
Nothing distracts them, nothing turns them aside, they 
act rather by instinct than otherwise, and many when 
taken out of their special groove are mere ciphers in a 
way that it is difficult to understand. 

“The making of good verses is assuredly a rare and 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 285 


charming gift; few people take more pleasure than I do 
in matters of poetry; but yet I cannot limit and cir- 
cumscribe my life within the twelve feet of an Alexandrine; 
there are a thousand things which disquiet me as much 
as a hemistich. It is not the condition of society and the 
reforms that should be made; I care little whether the 
peasants know how to read or not, and whether men eat 
bread or browse on grass; but a hundred thousand vis- 
ions pass through my head in an hour which have not the 
least connection with caesura or rhyme, and it is this 
which causes me to execute so little, although I have 
more ideas than certain poets who might be burnt with 
their own works. 

I worship beauty and feel it; I can express it as well 
as the most amorous statuaries can comprehend it, and 
yet I sculpture nothing. The ugliness and imperfection 
of the rough sketch revolt me; I cannot wait until, by 
dint of polishing and repolishing, the work finally suc- 
ceeds; if I could make up my mind to leave certain things 
in my work alone, whether in verse or in painting, I 
might perhaps in the end produce a poem or a picture 
that would make me famous, and those who love me (if 
there is anyone in the world who takes the trouble to do 
so) would not be obliged to believe in me on trust, and 
would have a triumphant reply to the sardonic sneerings 
of the detractors of that great but unknown genius — my- 
self. 

see many men who will take palette and pencils and 
cover their canvas without any great anxiety concerning 
what caprice is producing at the extremity of their brush, 
and others who will write a hundred verses one after 
another without making an erasure or once raising their 
eyes to the ceiling. I always admire themselves, even if I 
sometimes fail to admire their productions; from my 


286 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


heart I envy the charming intrepidity and happy blind- 
ness which prevent them from seeing even their most 
palpable faults. As soon as I have drawn anything wrong 
I see it at once, and am pre-occupied with it beyond 
measure; and as I am far more accomplished in theory 
than in practice, it very often happens that I am unable 
to correct a mistake of which I am conscious. In that 
event I turn the canvas with its face to the wall and never 
go back to it again. 

“The idea of perfection is so present with me, that I 
am instantly seized with distaste for my work and pre- 
vented from carrying it on. 

“Ah! when I compare its ugly pout on canvas or pa- 
per with the soft smiles of my thought, when I see a 
frightful bat passing in place of the beautiful dream that 
spread its long wings of light upon the bosom of my 
nights, when I see a thistle springing up from the idea of 
a rose, and hear an ass’s bray where I looked for the 
sweetest melodies of the nightingale, I am so horribly 
disappointed, so angry with myself, so furious at my own 
impotence that I resolve never again to write or speak a 
single word of my life rather than thus commit crimes of 
high treason against my thoughts. 

“I cannot even succeed in writing such a letter as I 
should wish. I often say something quite different; 
some portions are excessively developed, others dwindle 
away so as to become imperceptible, while frequently the 
idea which I intended to express is absent, or present 
only in postscript. 

“When commencing to write to you I had certainly no 
intention of telling you one-half of what I have said. I 
was merely going to inform you that we were about to 
act a play; but a word leads to a phrase; parentheses are 
big with other little parentheses which again contain 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 287 


others ready to be brought forth. There is no reason 
why such writing should come to an end, and should not 
extend to two hundred folio volumes — which would as- 
suredly be too much. ^ 

As soon as I take up my pen a buzzing and a rustling 
of wings begin in my brain as though multitudes of cock- 
chafers were set free within it. There is a knocking 
against the sides of my skull, a turning, ascending and 
descending with horrible noise; it is my thoughts which 
are fain to fly away, and are seeking for an outlet; they 
all endeavor to come forth at once; more than one breaks 
its legs and tears the crape of its wing in the attempt; 
sometimes the door is so blocked up that not one can 
cross the threshold and reach the paper. 

‘‘ Such is my nature. Not an excellent one doubtless, 
but what can I do ? The fault rests with the gods and 
not with me, poor helpless devil that I am. I have no 
need to entreat your indulgence, my dear Silvio; I have 
it beforehand, and you are so kind as to read my illegible 
scrawlings, my headless and tailless dreamings, through 
to the end. However unconnected and absurd they may 
be they have always interest for you because they come 
from me, and anything that is myself, even if it be not 
good, is not altogether without value in your eyes. 

may let you see what is most revolting to the 
generality of men — sincere pride. But a truce for awhile 
to all these fine things, and since I am writing to you 
about the piece that we are to perform, let us return to it 
and say something about it. 

‘‘The rehearsal took place to-day. I was never so 
confused in my life, not owing to the embarassment in- 
separable from reciting anything before so many people, 
but from another cause. We were in costume and ready 
to begin; Theodore alone had not yet arrived. A mes- 


288 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


sage was sent to his room to know what was keeping 
him; he replied that he was just ready and was coming 
down. 

‘‘He came in fact. I heard his step in the corridor 
long before he appeared, and yet no one in the world has 
a lighter step than Theodore; but the sympathy which I 
feel with him is so powerful that I can in a measure di- 
vine his movements through the walls, and, when I knew 
that he was about to lay his hand on the handle of the 
door, I was seized with a kind of trembling, and my 
heart beat with horrible violence. It seemed to me that 
something of importance in my life was about to be deci- 
ded, and that I had reached a solemn and long-expected 
moment. 

“The door opened slowly and closed in the same way. 

“There was a general cry of admiration. The men 
applauded, and the women grew scarlet. Rosette alone 
became extremely pale and leaned against the wall, as 
though a sudden revelation were passing through her 
brain. She made in a contrary direction, the same 
movement as I did. I always suspected her of loving 
Theodore. 

“No doubt she at that moment believed as I did that 
the pretended Rosalind was really nothing less than a 
young and beautiful woman, and the frail card-castle of 
her hope all at once gave way, while mine rose upon its 
ruins; at least this is what I thought; I may, perhaps, 
be mistaken, for I was scarcely in a condition to make 
accurate observations. 

“There were three or four pretty women present, with- 
out counting Rosette; they appeared to be revoltingly 
ugly. By the side of this sun the star of their beauty 
was suddenly eclipsed, and everyone was asking how it 
had been possible to think them even passable. Men 








w 

1 





' 


















MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPUST 289 


who previously would have esteemed themselves most 
fortunate to have them as mistresses, 'would scarcely 
have been willing to take them as servants. 

^^The image which, till then, had shown itself only 
feebly and with vague outlines, the phantom that I had 
worshipped and vainly pursued was there before my 
eyes, living, palpable, no longer in twilight and vapor, 
but bathed in floods of white light; not in a vain disguise, 
but in its real costume; no longer in the derisive form of 
a young man, but with the features of the most charming 
woman. 

‘‘I experienced a sensation of enormous comfort, as 
though a mountain or two had been lifted off my breast. 
I felt myself-horror vanishing, and was released from the 
pain of regarding my self as a monster. I cam.e again to 
conceive quite a pastoral opinion of myself, and all the 
violets of spring bloomed once more in my heart. 

“He, or rather she (for I wish henceforth to forget 
that I had the stupidity to take her for a man) remained 
motionless for a minute on the threshold of the room, as 
though to give the gathering time to utter its first excla- 
mation. A bright ray lit her up from head to foot, and 
on the dark back-ground of the corridor which receded 
far into the distance behind, the carved door case serving 
her as a frame, she shone as though the light had eman- 
ated from her instead of being merely reflected, and she 
might rather have been taken for a marvellous production 
of the brush than for a human creature made of flesh and 
bone. 

“Her long brown hair, intermingled with strings of 
great pearls, fell in natural ringlets along her lovely 
cheeks! her shoulders and breast were uncovered, and I 
had never seen any in the world so beautiful; the sub- 
limest marble cannot come near to such exquisite per- 

Maupin— 18 


290 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


fection. To see the life coursing beneath the clouded 
transparency! how white and yet so ruddy the flesh! how 
happily the harmonious golden tints effect the transition 
from skin to hair! what entrancing poems in the soft un- 
dulations of these outlines, more supple and velvety than 
the neck of a swan! Were there words to express what 
I feel I would give you a description fifty pages long; 
but languages were made by some scoundrels or other 
who had never gazed attentively on a woman’s back or 
bosom, and we do not possess half of the most indispens- 
able terms. 

‘‘I decidedly believe that I must become a sculptor, 
for to see such beauty and to be unable to express it in 
one way or another is sufficient to make a man furious and 
mad. I have made twenty sonnets to these shoulders but 
that is not enough; I should like something which I could 
touch with my finger and which, would be exactly like; 
verses express only the phantom of beauty and not beauty 
itself. The painter attains to a more accurate semblance, 
but it is only a semblance. Sculpture has all the reality 
that anything completely false can possess; it has a mul- 
tiple aspect, casts a shadow and may be touched. Your 
sculptured differs from your veritable mistress only in 
this that she is a little harder and does not speak — two 
very trifling defects! 

‘‘Her dress was made of a stuff of varying color, 
azure in the light, and golden in the shade; a well and 
close fitting boot was on a foot which, apart from this, 
was excessively small, and stockings of scarlet silk wound 
amorously round a most shapely and enticing leg; her arms 
which were bare to the elbows and emerged from a cluster 
of lace, were round, plump, and white, as splendid as pol- 
ished silver, with unimaginably delicate lineaments; her 
hands, which v/ere laden with jewelry, were softly sway- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


291 


ing a large fan of singularly variegated feathers, which 
looked like a little pocket rainbow. 

“She advanced into the room, her cheeks slightly 
kindled with a red which was not paint, and everyone 
was in raptures, crying out and asking whether it was 
really possible that it could be he; Theodore de S^rannes, 
the daring rider, the demon duellist, the determined 
hunter, and whether he was perfectly sure that it was not 
his twin sister. 

“But you would think that he had never worn any 
other costume in his life! His movements are not in the 
least embarassed, he walks very well, and does not get 
entangled in his train; he ogles and flirts with his fan in 
a ravishing manner! and his waist is so slender! you 
might enclose it with your fingers! It is extraordinary, 
inconceivable! ']['he illusion is as complete as it can be; 
you would almost think that he had a bosom, his breast 
is so developed and well filled, and then not a hair on his 
face, not, a single one; and his voice so sweet! Oh! the 
beautiful Rosalind! and who would not wish to be her 
Orlando ? 

“Yes, who would not wish to be the Orlando of such 
a Rosalind, even at the cost of the torments I have suf- 
fered ? To love as I did with a monstrous love which 
could not be confessed and yet which could not be up- 
rooted from your heart; to be condemned to keep the 
profoundest silence, and to shrink from indulging in what 
the most discreet and respectful lover might fearlessly say 
to the most prudish and severe of women; to feel your- 
self devoured by insane longings without excuse even in 
the eyes of the most abandoned debauchees; what are ordi- 
nary passions to such a one as that, a passion ashamed 
of itself and hopeless, whose improbable success would 
be a crime and would cause you to die of shame? To be 


292 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


reduced to the wish for failure, to dread favorable chances 
and opportunities, and to avoid them as another would 
seek them — such was my fate. 

^^The deepest discouragement had taken possession of 
me; I looked upon myself with horror, mingled with sur- 
prise and curiosity. What was most revolting to me was 
the thought that I had never loved before, and that this 
was my first effervescence of youth, the first Easter-daisy 
in the spring-tide of my love. 

“ This monstrosity took the place with me of the fresh 
and chaste illusions of early years; my fondly cherished 
dreams of tenderness at evening on the skirts of the 
woods, down the little reddening-paths, or along the 
white marble terraces, near the sheet of water in the 
park, were then to be metamorphosed into this perfidious 
sphinx with doubtful smile and ambiguous voice, and 
before which I stood without venturing to undertake 
the solution of the enigma! To interpret it wrongly 
would have caused my death; for, alas! it is the 
only tie which unites me to the world; when it is broken, 
all will be over. Take from me this spark and I shall be 
more gloomy and inanimate than the band-swathed 
mummy of the most ancient Pharaoh. 

‘^On the occasions when I felt myself most forcibly 
drawn towards Theodore, I would throw myself back 
with dismay into the arms of Rosette, although she was 
infinitely displeasing to me; I tried to interpose her like 
a barrier and shield between myself and him, and I felt a 
secret satisfaction when lying beside her in thinking that 
she had been proved to be a woman, and that although 
I had ceased to love, I was still loved by her sufficiently 
well to prevent our union from degenerating into intrigue 
and debauch. 

<< Nevertheless, at the bottom of my heart, I felt 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


293 


through all this a kind of regret at being thus faithless to 
the idea of my impossible passion; I felt resentful against 
myself for, as it were, an act of treason, and, though I 
well knew that I should never possess the object of my 
love, I was discontented with myself, and resumed my 
coldness towards Rosette. 

“The rehearsal was much better than I hoped for; 
Theodore especially proved admirable; it was also con- 
sidered that I acted uncommonly well. This, however, 
was not because I possess the qualities necessary to 
make a good actor, and it would be a great mistake to 
suppose me capable of taking other parts in the same 
fashion; but, through rather a singular chance, the words 
which I had to utter agreed with my situation so well, 
that they seemed to me to have been invented by myself 
rather than learnt by my heart from a book. Had my 
mem.ory failed me at certain passages, I should certainly 
not have hesitated for a minute before supplying the void 
with an improvised phrase. Orlando was I, at least, as 
much as I was Orlando; it would be impossible to meet 
with a more wonderful coincidence. 

“ In the wrestling scene, when Theodore unfastened 
the chain from his neck and presented it to me, in ac- 
cordance with his part, he cast upon me so sweetly lan- 
guorous and promising a look, and uttered the sentence: 

‘ Gentleman, 

Wear this for me, one out of suits with fortune 

That could give more but that her hand lacks means, 

with such grace and nobility, that I was really troubled 
by it and could scarcely go on: 

‘ What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue ? 

I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference. 

O poor Orlando! ’ 

“In the third act Rosalind, dressed like a man and 


294 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPLN 


under the name of Ganymede, reappears with her cousin, 
Celia, who has changed her name to Aliena. 

<‘This made a disagreeable impression upon me. I 
had already become so well accustomed to the feminine 
costume which indulged my desires with some hope, and 
kept me in a perfidious but seducing error to look upon 
our wishes as realities on the testimony of the most fleet- 
ing appearances, and I became quite gloomy when Theo- 
dore reappeared in his man’s dress, more gloomy than I 
had been before; for joy only serves to make us feel grief 
more keenly, the sun strives only to give us a better 
understanding of the horror of darkness, and the gaiety 
of white only serves to give relief to all the sadness of 
black. 

^‘His coat was the most gallant and coquettish in the 
world, of an elegant and capricious cut, all adorned with 
trimmings and ribbons, nearly in the style of the wits of 
the court of Louis XIII; a pointed felt hat with a long 
curled feather shaded the ringlets of his beautiful hair, 
and the lower part of his travelling cloak was raised by a 
long damaskeened sword. 

‘‘Yet he was dressed in such a way as to give one a 
presentiment that these manly clothes had a feminine 
lining; a breadth of hip, a fullness of bosom, and a sort of 
undulation never seen in cloth on the body of a man, left 
but slight doubts respecting the person’s sex. 

“He had a half deliberate, half timid manner which 
was most diverting, and, with infinite art, he assumed as 
embarassed an appearance in the costume which was his 
usual one, as he had seemed to be at his ease in garments 
which were not his own. 

“ My serenity returned to some extent, and I persuaded 
myself afresh that it was really a woman. I recovered 
sufficient composure to play my part in a fitting manner. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


295 


“ Do you know this piece? Perhaps not. For the 
last fortnight I have done nothing but read and declaim 
it, I know it entirely by heart, and I cannot imagine that 
everybody is not as conversant with its knot and plot as 
I am myself. I fall commonly enough into the error of 
believing that when I am drunk all creation is fuddled 
and incapable, and if I knew Hebrew I would to a cer- 
tainty ask my servant in Hebrew for my dressing-gown 
and slippers, and be very much astonished that he did not 
understand me. You will read it if you wish; I shall as- 
sume that you have read it and only touch upon such 
passages as have some bearing upon my situation. 

‘^Rosalind, when walking in the forest with her cousin, 
is greatly astonised to find that instead of blackberries 
and sloes the bushes bear madrigals in her praise; strange 
fruits which fortunately do not grow on brambles as a 
rule; for when you are thirsty it is better to find good 
blackberries on the branches than bad sonnets. She is 
very anxious to know who has spoiled the bark of the 
young trees in this way by cutting the letters of her name 
upon it. Celia, who has already encountered Orlando, 
tells her, after many entreaties, that the rhymer is none 
other than the young man who vanquished the Duke’s 
athlete Charles, in the wrestling match. 

Soon Orlando himself appears, and Rosalind enters 
into conversation with him by asking him what o’clock it 
is. Certes, this opening is simple in the extreme; noth- 
ing in the world could be more homely. But be not 
afraid; from this commonplace and vulgar phrase you 
will see gathered in a harvest of unexpected conceits, full 
of flowers and whimsical comparisons as from the most 
vigorous and best manured soil. 

“After some lines of sparkling dialogue, whose every 
word, falling on the phrase, causes millions of sportivq 


296 MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


spangles to fly right and left like a hammer on a red-hot 
bar, Rosalind asks Orlando whether peradventure he may 
know the man who hangs odes on hawthorns and elegies 
on brambles, and who seems to have the quotidian of love 
upon him, an ill which she is quite able to cure. Or- 
lando confesses that it is he that is so tormented by love, 
and asks her to do him the favor of showing him a rem- 
edy for this sickness, seeing that she boasted of having 
several infallible ones for its cure. ^ You in love?’ re- 
plies Rosalind; ^you have none of the marks whereby a 
lover may be known; you have neither a lean cheek nor 
a blue and sunken eye; your hose is not ungartered, nor 
your sleeve unbuttoned, and your shoe is most grace- 
fully tied; if you were in love with anyone it is assuredly 
with yourself, and you need not my remedies.’ 

It was not without genuine emotion that I replied 
textually as follows: 

“‘Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I 
love. ’ 

“This answer so unexpected and strange, which 
is led up to by nothing, and had seemingly been written 
expressly for me as though by a species of provision on 
the part of the poet, greatly affected me as I uttered it 
standing before Theodore, whose divine lips were still 
slightly swelled with the ironic expression of the phrase 
that he had just spoken, while his eyes smiled with inex- 
pressible sweetness, and a bright ray of kindness gilded 
all the loftiness of his young and beautiful countenance. 

“ ‘ Me believe it! You may as soon make her that you 
love believe it; which I warrant she is apter to do, than 
to confess she does; that is one of the points in the which 
women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in 
good sooth, are you he that hangs these fair praises of 
Rosalind on the trees, and have you truly need of a rem- 
edy for your madness?’ 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


297 


When she is quite satisfied that it is he, Orlando, 
and none other, who has rhymed these admirable verses 
going on so many feet, beautiful Rosalind consents to tell 
him her recipe* Its composition was as follows: — She 
pretended to be the beloved of the love-sick suitor, who 
was obliged to woo her as though she had been his 
very mistress, and to cure him of his passion she indulged 
in the most extravagant caprices; would now weep and 
then smile; one day entertain him another forswear him; 
would scratch him and spit in his face, and not for a 
single moment be like herself; fantastical, inconstant, 
prudish, and languishing, she was all these in turns and 
the poor wretch had to endure or execute all the unruly 
fancies engendered by weariness, vapors, and the blues 
in the hollow head of a frivolous woman. A goblin, an 
ape, and an attorney all in one had not devised more 
maliciousness. This miraculous treatment had not failed 
to produce its effect; the sick one was driven from his 
mad humor of love into a living humor of madness — 
which was to forswear the full stream of the world and 
to live in a nook truly monastic, a most satisfactory re- 
sult, and one, too, which might easily be expected. 

Orlando, as may well be believed, is not very anxious 
to recover his health by such means; but Rosalind insists 
and is desirous of undertaking the cure. She uttered 
the sentence: would cure you if you would but call 

me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote and woo 
me,’ with so marked and visible an intention, and cast- 
ing on me so strange a look, that I found it impossible 
not to give it a wider meaning than belongs to the words, 
nor see in it an indirect admonition to declare my true 
feelings. And when Orlando replies: ‘With all my 
heart, good youth,’ it was in a still more significant man- 
ner, and with a sort of spite at failing to make herself 


298 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 


understood, that she uttered the reply ‘Nay, you must 
call me Rosalind. ’ 

“Perhaps I was mistaken and thought I saw what had 
really no existence, but it seemed to me that Theodore 
had perceived my love, though I had most certainly 
never spoken a word of it to him, and that he was allud- 
ing, through the veil of these borrowed expressions, be- 
neath this theatrical mask and in these hermaphrodite 
v/ords to his real sex and our mutual situation. It is 
quite impossible that so spiritual and refined a woman as 
she is should not have distinguished, from the very be- 
ginning, what was passing in my soul. In the absence 
of my words, my eyes and troubled air spoke plainly 
enough, and the veil of ardent friendship which I had 
cast over my love, was not so impenetrable that it could 
not be easily pierced by an attentive and interested ob- 
server. The most innocent and inexperienced girl 
would not have been checked by it for a moment. 

“Some important reason, and one that I cannot dis- 
cover, doubtless compels the fair one to this cursed dis- 
guise, which has been the cause of all my torments and 
was nearly making a strange lover of me; blit for this, 
everything would have gone evenly and easily like a car- 
riage with well greased wheels on a level and finely 
sanded road; I might have abandoned myself with sweet 
security to the most amorously vagrant dreamings, and 
taken in my hands the litttle white silky hand of my divin- 
ity without shuddering with horror, or shrinking twenty 
paces back as though I had touched a red-hot iron, or 
felt the claws of Beelzebub in person. 

“ Instead of being in despair and as agitated as a real 
maniac, of doing my utmost to feel remorse and of 
grieving because I failed, I should have said to myself 
every morning, stretching my arms with a sense of duty 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


299 


done and conscience at rest; am in love,’ a sentence 
as agreeable to say to yourself in the morning with your 
head on a soft pillow, and warm bed-clothes covering 
you, as any other imaginable sentence of four words — 
always excepting this one; ‘ I have money.’ 

‘‘After rising I should have placed myself before my 
glass, and there, looking at myself with a sort of respect, 
have waxed tender, as I combed my hair, over my poetic 
paleness, resolving at the same time to turn it to good 
account and duly make the most of it, for nothing can be 
viler than to make love with a scarlet phiz; and when 
you are so unfortunate as to be ruddy and in love, cir- 
cumstances which may come together, I am of opinion 
that you should flour your physiognomy daily or renounce 
refinement and stick to the Margots and Toinons. 

“I should then have breakfasted with compunction and 
gravity in order to nourish this dear body, this precious 
box of passion, to compose sound, amorous chyle and 
quick, hot blood for it from the juice of meat and game, 
and keep it in a condition to afford pleasure to charitable 
souls. 

“Breakfast finished, and while picking my teeth, I 
should have woven a few heteroclite rhymes after the 
manner of a sonnet, and all in honor of my mistress; I 
should have found out a thousand little comparisons, each 
more unusual than another, and infinitely gallant. In the 
first quatrain there would have been a dance of suns, and 
in the second a minuet of theological virtues; the two 
tercets would not have been of an inferior style; Helen 
would have been treated like an inn-servant, and Paris 
like an idiot; the East would have had nothing to be en- 
vied for in magnificence of metaphor; the last line, espe- 
cially, would have been particularly admirable and would 
have contained at least too conceits in a syllable; for a 


300 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


scorpion’s venom is in its tail, and the merit of a sonnet 
is in the last line. 

‘‘The sonnet completed and well and duly transcribed 
on glazed and perfumed paper, I should have left the 
house a hundred cubits tall, bending my head lest I 
should knock against the sky and be caught in the clouds 
(a wise precaution), and should have gone and recited 
my new production to all my friends and enemies, then 
to infants at the breast of their nurses, then to the horses 
and donkeys, then to the wall and trees, just to know the 
opinion of creation respecting the last product of my vein. 

“In social circles I should have spoken with women in 
a doctoral manner, and maintained sentimental theses in 
a grave and measured tone of voice, like a man who 
knows much more than he cares to say concerning the 
subject in hand, and has not acquired his knowledge from 
books — a style which never fails to produce a prodigious 
effect, and causes all the women in the company who 
have ceased to mention their age, and the few little girls 
not invited to dance to turn up the whites of their eyes. 

“I might have led the happiest life in the world, 
treading on the pug-dog’s tail without its mistress making 
too great an outcry, upsetting tables laden with china, 
and eating the choicest morsel at table without leaving 
any for the rest of the party. All this would have been 
excused out of consideration for the well-known absent- 
mindedness of lovers; and as they saw me swallowing up 
everything with a wild look, everyone would have clasped 
his hands and said, ‘Poor fellov/! ’ 

“And then the dreamy, doleful air, the dishevelled 
hair, the untidy stockings, the slack cravat, the great 
hanging arms that I should have had! how I should have 
hastened through the avenues in the park, now swiftly, 
now slowly, after the fashion of a man whose reason is 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


301 


completely gone! How I should have stared at the 
moon and made rings in the water with profound tran- 
quillity. 

^‘But the gods have ordained it otherwise. 

am smitten with a beauty in doublet and boots, - 
with a proud Bradamant who scorns the garments of her 
sex, and leaves you at times wavering amid the most dis- 
quieting perplexities; her features and body are indeed 
the features and body of a woman, but her mind is un- 
questionably that of a man. 

^^My mistress is most proficient with the sword, and 
might teach the most experienced fencing master’s as- 
sistant; she has had I do not know how many duels, and 
has killed or wounded three or four persons, she clears 
ditches ten feet wide on horseback, and hunts like an old 
country squire — singular qualities for a mistress! such 
things never happen except to me. 

laugh but I have certainly no cause for doing so, 
for I never suffered so much, and the last two months 
seemed to me like two years or rather two centuries. 
There was an ebb and flow of uncertainties in my head 
sufficient to stupefy the strongest brain; I was so vio- 
lently agitated and pulled in all directions, I had such 
furious transports, such dull atonies, such extravagant 
hopes and such deep despairs, that I really do not know 
how it was that I did not die from the pain of it. This 
idea so occupied and possessed me that I was astonished 
that it was not seen clearly through my body like a 
candle in a lantern, and I was in mortal terror lest 
someone should chance to discover the object of my in- 
sane love. 

However, Rosettte, being the person most interested 
in watching the movements of my heart, appeared to 
perceive nothing; I believe that she was too much engaged 


302 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


in loving Theodore to pay attention to my cooling towards 
her; otherwise I must be a master of the art of dissimula- 
tion, and I am not so conceited as to have this belief. Theo- 
dore himself up to that day never showed that he had 
the faintest suspicion of the condition of my soul, and 
always spoke to me in a familiar and friendly fashion, as 
a well-bred young fellow speaks to another of his own 
age — nothing more. His conversation with me used to 
turn on all sorts of subjects, arts, poetry, and other simi- 
lar matters, but never on anything of an intimate and ex- 
act nature having reference to himself or to me. 

‘‘It may be that the motives compelling him to this 
disguise have ceased to exist, and that he will soon re- 
sume the dress that is suitable for him. This I do not 
know; the fact remains that Rosalind uttered certain 
words with peculiar inflections, and in a very marked man- 
ner emphasized all the passages in her part which had an 
ambiguous meaning and might point in a particular 
direction. 

“ In the trysting scene, from the moment when she re- 
proached Orlando for not coming two hours too soon as 
would befit a genuine lover instead of two hours too late, 
until the sorrowful sigh which, fearful at the extent of 
her passion, she leaves as she throws herself into Aliena’s 
arms; ‘ O coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst 
know how many fathoms deep I am in love! ’ she displayed 
miraculous talent. It was an irresistible blending of 
tenderness, melancholy and love; there was a trembling 
and agitation in her voice, and behind the laugh might 
be felt the most violent love ready to burst forth; add to 
this all the piquancy and singularity of the transposition 
and the novelty of seeing a young man woo a mistress 
whom he takes for a man, and who has all the appear- 
ance of one. 


MADEMOISELLE DE 'MAULDN 


303 


“Expressions which in other situations would have 
appeared ordinary and common-place, were in ours 
thrown into peculiar relief, and all the small change of 
amorous comparisons and protestations in vogue on the 
stage seemed struck with quite a new stamp; besides, had 
the thoughts, instead of being rare and charming as they 
are, been more worn than a judge’s robe or the crupper of 
a hired donkey, the style in which they were delivered 
would have caused them to be apparently characterized 
by the most marvellous refinement and best taste in the 
world. 

“I forgot to tell you that Rosette, after declining the 
part of Rosalind, compliantly undertook the secondary 
part of Phoebe. Phoebe is a shepherdess in the forest of 
Arden, loved to distraction by the shepherd Silvius, 
whom she cannot endure, and whom she overwhelms 
with consistent harshness. Phoebe is as cold as the 
moon whose name she bears; she has a heart of snow 
which is not to be melted by the fire of the most burn- 
ing sighs, but whose icy crust constantly thickens and 
hardens like diamond; but scarcely has she seen Rosa- 
lind in the dress of the handsome page Ganymede, than 
all the ice dissolves to tears, and the diamond becomes 
softer than wax. 

“The haughty Phoebe who laughed at love, is herself 
in love, and now suffers the torments which she formerly 
made others endure. Her pride is humbled so far as to 
make every advance; she sends poor Silvius to Rosalind 
with an ardent letter containing the avowal of her pas- 
sion in most humble and supplicating terms. Rosalind, 
touched with pity for Silvius, and having, moreover, 
most excellent reasons for not responding to Phoebe’s 
love, subjects her to the harshest treatment, and marks 
her with unparalleled cruelty and animosity. Neverthe- 


304 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 


less, Phoebe prefers these outrages to the most delicate 
^nd impassioned madrigals from her hapless shepherd; 
she follows the handsome stranger everywhere, and, by 
dint of her importunities, extracts the promise — the most 
favorable she can obtain — that if ever he marries a 
woman he will most certainly marry her; meanwhile he 
binds her to treat Silvius well, and not to nurse too 
flattering a hope. 

“Rosette acquitted herself of her part with a sad, fond 
grace and a tone of mournful resignation which went to 
the heart; and when Rosalind Said to her, ‘ I would love 
you if I could,’ the tears were on the point of overflowing 
her eyes and she found it difficult to restrain them, for 
Phoebe’s history is hers, just as Orlando’s is mine, with 
the difference that everything turns out happily for Or- 
lando, while Phoebe, deceived in her love, is reduced to 
marrying Silvius, instead of the charming ideal she would 
fain embrace. Life is ordered thus; that which makes 
the happiness of one, makes of necessity the misfortune 
of another. It is very fortunate for me that Th(§odore is 
a woman; it is very unfortunate for Rosfette that he is not 
a man; and she now finds herself amid the amorous im- 
possibilities in which I was lately lost. 

“At the end of the piece Rosalind lays aside the doub- 
let of the page Ganymede for the garments of her sex, 
and makes herself known to the duke as his daughter, 
and to Orlando as his mistress. The god Hymen then 
arrives with his saffron livery and lawful torches. Three 
marriages take place — Orlando weds Rosalind, Phoebe 
Silvius, and the facetious Touchstone the artless Audrey. 
Then comes the salutation of the epilogue, and the cur- 
tain falls. 

“We have been very greatly interested and occupied 
with all this. It was in some measure a play within a 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UP IN 


305 


play, an invisible play unknown to the audience, which 
we acted for ourselves alone, and which, in symbolical 
words, summed up our entire life, and expressed our most 
hidden desires. Without Rosalind’s singular recipe, I 
should have become more sick than ever, without even 
the hope of a distant cure, and should have continued to 
wander sadly through the crooked paths of the dark 



•rest. 


Nevertheless, I have only a moral certainty; I am 
without proofs, and I cannot remain longer in this state 
of uncertainty; I really must speak to Theodore in a mxore 
definite manner. I have gone up to him twenty times 
with a sentence prepared, and could not m^anage to utter 
it. I dare not; I have many opportunities of speaking to 
him alone, either in the park or in my room, or in his 
own, for he visits me, and I him, but I let them slip with- 
out availing myself of them, although the next moment I 
feel mortal regret and fall into horrible passions with my- 
self. I open my mouth, and, in spite of myself 
other words take the place of those that I would 
utter; instead of declaring my love, I enlarge upon the 
rain or the fine weather, or some other similar stupidity. 
Yet the season is drawing to a close, and we shall soon re- 
turn to town; the facilities which here are opened up 
favorably to my desires will never be met with again. 
We shall perhaps lose sight of each other, and opposite 
currents will no doubt carry us away. / 


Country freedom is so charming and convenient a 
thing! the trees, even when they have lost some of their 
leaves in autumn, afford such delicious shades to the 
dreamings of incipiei^t love! it is difficult to resist amid 
the surroundings of beautiful nature! the birds have such 
languorous songs, the flowers such intoxicating scents, 
the backs of the hills such golden and silky turf! Soli- 

Maupin— 19 


3o6 mademoiselle DE MAUPLN 


tude inspires you with a thousand voluptuous thoughts, 
which the whirlwind of the world would have scattered 
or have caused to fly hither and thither, and the instinc- 
tive movement of two beings listening to the beating of 
their hearts in the silence of the deserted country is to 
entwine the arms more closely and enfold each other, as 
though they were indeed the only living creatures in the 
world. 

* ‘ I was out walking this morning; the weather was mild 
and damp, and though the sky gave no glimpse of the 
smallest lozenge of azure, it was neither dark nor lower- 
ing. Two or three tones of pearl-gray, harmoniously 
blended, bathed it from end to end, and across this va- 
porous background cottony clouds, like large pieces of 
wool, passed slowly along; they were being driven by the 
dying breath of a little breeze, scarcely strong enough to 
shake the summits of the most restless aspens; flakes of 
mist were rising among the tall chestnut-trees and mark- 
ing the course of the river in the distance. When the 
breeze took breath again, parched and reddened leaves 
would scatter in agitation and hasten along the path be- 
fore me like swarms of timid sparrows; then the breath 
ceasing, they would sink down a few paces further on — 
a true image of those natures which seem to be birds fly- 
ing freely wkh their wings, but which after all are only 
leaves withered by the morning frost, the toy and sport 
of the slightest passing breeze. 

^‘The distance was stumped with vapor and the fringes 
of the horizon ravelled on the border in such a manner 
that it was scarcely possible to determine the exact point 
at which the earth ended and the sky began — a gray 
which was somewhat more opaque, and a mist which 
was somewhat more dense, vaguely indicating the sepa- 
ration and the difference of the planes. Through this 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


307 


curtain the willows, with their ashen tops, looked like 
spectral rather than real trees, and the curves of the hills 
had a greater resemblance to the undulations of an ac- 
cumulation of clouds than to the bearings of solid ground. 
The outlines of objects wavered to the eye, and a species 
of gray weft of unspeakable fineness, like a spider’s web, 
stretched between the foreground of the landscapes and 
the retreating depths behind; in shaded places the hatch- 
ings were much more clearly drawn, displaying the meshes 
of the network; in the brighter part this misty thread 
was imperceptible, and became lost in a diffused light. 
In the ai. there was something drowsy, damply warm, 
and sweetly dull, which strangely predisposed to melan- 
choly. 

‘^As I went along I thought that with me too autumn 
was come and the radiant summer vanished never to re- 
turn; the tree of my soul was perhaps stripped even barer 
than the trees of the forests; only, on the loftiest bough 
a single green little leaf remained, swaying, and quiver- 
ing, and full of sadness to see its sisters leave it one by 
one. 

‘‘Remain on the tree, O little leaf the color of hope, 
cling to the bough with all the strength of thy ribs and 
fibres; let not thyself be dismayed by the whistlings of 
the wind, O good little leaf! for, when thou art gone, who 
will mark whether I be a dead or a living tree, and who 
will restrain the woodman that he cut not my foot with 
blows of his ax nor make faggots of my boughs? It is 
not yet the time when trees are bare of leaves, and the 
sun may yet rid himself of the misty swaddling clothes 
which are about him. 

“This sight of the dying season impressed me greatly. 
I thought that time was flying fast, and that I might die 
without clasping my ideal to my heart. 


3o8 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


I returned home I formed a resolution. Since I 
could not make up my mind to speak, I wrote all my des- 
tiny on a sheet of paper. Perhaps it is ridiculous to 
write to some one living in the same house with you, and 
whom you may see any day at any hour; but I am no 
longer one to consider what is ridiculous or not. 

‘‘I sealed my letter not without trembling and chang- 
ing color; then, choosing a time when Theodore was out, 
I placed it on the middle of his table, and fled with as 
much agitation as though I had performed the most 
abominable action in the world. ” 


CHAPTER XII 


I promised you the continuation of my adventures; 
but I am so lazy about writing, that I really must love 
you as the apple of my eye, and know that you are more 
inquisitive than Eve or Psyche, to be able to sit down 
before a table with a large sheet of white paper which is 
to be turned quite black, and an ink-bottle deeper than the 
sea, whose every drop must turn into thoughts, or some- 
thing like them, without coming to the sudden resolution 
of mounting on horseback and going at full speed over 
the eighty enormous leagues which separate us, to tell 
you viva-zwce what I am going to scrawl to you in imper- 
ceptible lines, so that I may not be frightened myself at 
the prodigious volume of my Picaresque odyssey. 

Eighty leagues! to think that there is all this space 
between me and the person whom I love best in the 
world! I have a great mind to tear up my letter and have 
my horse saddled. But I forgot; i»-the dress that I am 
wearing I could not approach you and resume the famil- 
iar life which we used to lead together when we were 
very ingenuous and innocent little girls. If I ever go 
back to petticoats, it will certainly be from this motive. 

‘‘I left you, I think, at the departure from the inn 
where I had passed such a comical night, and where my 
virtue was nearly making shipwreck as it was leaving the 


310 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


harbor. We all set out together, going in the same 
direction. My companions were in the greatest raptures 
over the beauty of my horse, which is, in fact, a 
thoroughbred, and one of the best coursers in existence; 
this raised me at least half a cubit in their estimation, 
and they added all my mount’s deserts to my own. 
Nevertheless, they seemed to fear that it was too frisky 
and spirited for me. I bade them calm their fears, and 
to show them that there was no danger, made in curvet 
several times; then I cleared rather a high fence, and set 
off at a gallop. 

“The band tried in vain to follow; I turned bridle 
when I was far enough away, and turned at full speed to 
meet them; when I was close to them I checked my 
horse as he was launched out on his four feet and stop- 
ped him short, which, as you know, or, as you do not 
know, is a genuine feat of strength. 

“From esteem they passed at a bound to the profound- 
est respect. They had not suspected that a young 
scholar, who had only just left the university, was so 
good a horseman as all that. This discovery that they 
made was of greater service to me than if they had recog- 
nized in me every theological and cardinal virtue — instead 
of treating me as a youngster they spoke to me with a tone 
of obsequious familiarity which was very gratifying to me. 

“I had not laid aside my pride with clothes; being no 
longer a woman, I wished to be in every respect a man, 
and not be satisfied with having merely the external 
appearance of one. I had made up my mind to have as 
a gentleman the success to which, in the character of a 
woman, I could no longer pretend. What I was most 
anxious about was to know how I should proceed in order 
to possess courage; for courage and skill in bodily exer- 
cises are the means by which men find it easiest to 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


311 

establish their reputation. It is not that I am timid for 
a woman, and I am devoid of the idiotic pusillanimity 
to be seen in man}'^; but from this to the fierce and heed- 
less brutality which is the glory of men there still re- 
mains a wide interval, and my intention was to become a 
little fire-eater, a hector like men of fashion, so that I 
might be on a good footing in society and enjoy all the 
advantages of my metamorphosis. 

‘‘But the course of events shov/ed me that nothing 
was easier, and that the recipe for it was very simple. 

“ I will not relate to you, after the custom of travellers, 
that I did so many leagues on such a day, and went from 
such a place to such another, that the roast at the White 
Horse or the Iron Cross was raw or burnt, the wine sour, 
and the bed in which I slept hung with figured or flowered 
curtains; such details are very important and fitting to 
be preserved for posterity; but posterity must do without 
them for once, and you must submit to be ignorant of the 
number of dishes composing my dinner, and whether I 
slept well or ill during the course of my travels. 

“Nor shall I give you an exact description of the dif- 
ferent landscapes, the corn-fields and forests, the various 
modes of cultivation and the hamlet-faden hills which 
passed in succession before my eyes — it is easy to imag- 
ine them; take a little earth, plant a few trees and some 
blades of grass in it, daub on a bit of grayish or pale blue 
sky behind, and you will have a very sufficient idea of the 
moving background against which our little caravan was 
to be seen. If, in my first letter, I entered into some de- 
tails of the kind, pray excuse me, I will not relapse into 
the same fault again. As I had never gone out before, the 
least thing seemed to me of enormous importance. 

“ One thing of the gentlemen, the sharer of my bed, he 
whom I had nearly pulled by the sleeve in that memorable 


312 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


night, the agonies of which I have described to you at 
length, conceived a great passion for me, and kept his 
horse by the side of mine the whole time. 

Except that I would not have accepted him for a lover 
though he brought me the fairest crown in the world, he 
was not at all displeasing; he was well-informed, and was 
not without wit and good-humor; only, when he spoke 
of women, he did so with an air of contempt and irony, 
for which I would most willingly have torn both his eyes 
out of his head, and this the more because, for all its ex- 
aggeration, there was a great deal in what he said that 
was cruelly true, and the justice of which my man’s attire 
compelled me to admit. 

“ He invited me so pressingly and so often to go with 
him on a visit to one of his sisters, whose widowhood 
was nearly over, and who was then living at an old man- 
sion with one of his aunts, that I could not refuse him. 
I made a few objections for form’s sake, for in reality I 
was as ready to go there as anywhere else, and I could 
attain my end as well in this fashion as in another; and, 
as he assured me that he would feel quite offended if I 
did not give him at least a fortnight, I replied that I was 
willing, and that the matter was settled. 

^‘At a branching of the road, my companion, pointing 
to the right stroke of this natural Y, said to me! ^ It is 
down there! ’ The rest gave us a grasp of the hand and 
departed in the other direction. 

“After a few hours’ travelling we reached our destina- 
tion. 

“ A moat, which was rather broad, but which was filled 
with abundant and bushy vegetation instead of with water, 
separated the park from the high-road; it was lined with 
freestone, arid the angles bristled with gigantic iron 
spikes, which looked as if they had grown like natural 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


313 


plants between the disjointed blocks of the wall. A little 
one-arched bridge crossed this dry channel and gave ac- 
cess to the gateway. 

An avenue of lofty elms, arched like an arbor and cut 
in the old style, appeared before you first of all; and, 
after following it for some time, you arrived at a kind of 
cross-roads. 

The trees looked superannuated rather than old; they 
appeared to be wearing wigs and white powder; only a 
little tuft of foliage had been spared to them quite at the 
top; all the remainder was carefully pruned, so that they 
might have been taken for hugh plumes planted at inter- 
vals in the ground. 

“After leaving the cross-way, which was covered with 
fine, carefully-rolled grass, you had then to pass beneath 
a curious piece of foliage architecture ornamented with 
fire-pots, pyramids and rustic columns, all wrought with 
the assistance of shears and hedgebills in an enormous 
clump of box. In different perspectives to right and left 
might be seen now a half-ruined rock-work castle, now 
the moss-eaten staircase of a dried-up waterfall, or per- 
haps a vase, or a statue of a nymph and shepherd with 
nose and fingers broken and some pigeons perched on 
their shoulders and head. 

“A large flower-garden, laid out in the French style, 
stretched before the mansion; all the divisions were 
traced with box and holly in the most rigorously sym- 
metrical manner; it had quite as much the appearance of 
a carpet as of a garden; large flowers in ball-dress, with 
majestic bearing and serene air, like duchesses preparing 
to dance a minuet, bent their heads slightly to you as 
you passed; others, apparently less polished, remained 
stiff and motionless, like dowagers working tapestry. 
Shrubs of every possible shape, always excepting the 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


3H 

natural one, round, square, pointed and triangular, in 
green and gray boxes, seemed to walk in procession, 
along the great avenue, and lead you by the hand to the 
foot of the steps. 

‘‘A few turrets half entangled in more recent con- 
structions, rose above the line of the building by the 
whole height of their slate extinguishers, and their dove- 
tailed vanes of iron-plate bore witness to a sufficiently 
honorable antiquity. The windows of the pavillion in the 
centre all opened upon a common balcony ornamented 
with a very rich and highly- wrought iron balustrade, and 
the rest were surrounded with stone facings sculptured 
in figures and knots. 

‘‘Four or five large dogs ran up with open-mouthed 
barkings and prodigious gambols. They frisked about 
the horses, jumping up to their noses, and gave a special 
welcome to my comrade’s horse, which probably they 
often visited in the stable or followed out-of-doors. 

“A kind of servant, looking half laborer and half groom, 
at last appeared at all this noise, and taking our beasts 
by the bridle led them away. I had not as yet seen a 
living soul, with the exception of a little peasant-girl, as 
timid and wild as a deer, who had fled at the sight of us 
and crouched down in a furrow behind some hemp, 
although we had called her over and over again, and done 
all we could to reassure her. 

“No one was to be seen at the windows; you would 
have thought that the mansion was not inhabited at all, 
or only by spirits, for not the slightest sound could be 
heard from without. 

“We were beginning to ascend the steps, jingling our 
spurs, for our limbs were rather numb, when we heard a 
noise inside like the opening and shutting of doors, as if 
some one were hastening to meet us. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


315 


‘‘In fact, a young woman appeared at the top of the 
steps, cleared the space separating her from my com- 
panion at a single bound, and threw herself on his neck. 
He embraced her most affectionately, and putting his arm 
round her wsist, and almost lifting her up, carried her in 
this way to the top 

“ ‘Do you know that you are very amiable and polite 
for a brother, my dear Alcibiades? It is not at all un- 
necessary, sir, is it, to apprise you that he is my brother, 
for he certainly has scarcely the ways of one ? ’ said the 
young fair one turning towards me. 

“To which I replied that a mistake might possibly be 
made about it, and that it was in some measure a misfor- 
tune to be her brother and be thus excluded from the list 
of her adorers; and that were this my case, I should be- 
come at once the happiest and most miserable cavalier 
on the earth. This made her smile gently. 

“Talking thus we entered a parlor, the walls of which 
were decorated with high-draped Flanders tapestry. 
There were large trees, with sharp-pointed leaves sup- 
porting swarms of fantastic birds; the colors, altered by 
time, showed strange transpositions of tints; the sky was 
green, the trees royal blue with yellow lights, and in the 
drapery of the figures the shadow was often of an op- 
posite color to the ground formed by the material; the 
flesh resembled wood, and the nymphs walking beneath 
the faded shades of the forest looked like unswathed 
mummies; their mouths alone, the purple of which had 
preserved its primitive tint, smiled with an appearance 
of life. In the foreground bristled tall plants of singular 
green, with broad-striped flowers, the pistils of which re- 
sembled peacock’s crests. Herons with serious and 
thoughlful air, their heads sunk beneath their shoulders, 
and their long beaks resting on their plump crops, stood 


31 6 MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


philosophically on one of their thin legs in black and 
stagnant water streaked with tarnished silver threads; 
through the foliage there were distant glimpses of little 
mansions with turrets like pepper-boxes and balconies 
filled with beautiful ladies in grand attire watching pro- 
cessions or hunts pass by. 

Capriciously indented rockeries, with torrents of 
white wool falling from them, mingled with dappled 
clouds on the edge of the horizon. 

^^One of the things that struck me most was a huntress 
shooting a bird. Her open fingers had just released the 
string and the arrow was gone; but, as this part of the 
tapestry happened to be at a corner, the arrow was on the 
other side of the wall and had described a sharp curve, 
while the bird was flying away on motionless wings, and 
apparently desirous of gaining a neighboring branch. 

^‘This arrow, feathered and gold-tipped, always in the 
air and never reaching the mark, had a most singular ef- 
fect; it was like a sad and mournful symbol of human 
destiny, and the more I looked at it, the more I discov- 
ered in it mysterious and sinister meanings. There stood 
the huntress with her foot advanced, her knee bent, and 
her eye, with its silken lashes, wide open, and no longer 
able to see the arrow which had deviated from its path. 
She seemed to be looking anxiously for the mottled- 
plumed phenicopter which she was so desirous of bring- 
ing down and expecting to see fall before her pierced 
through and through. I do not know whether it was a 
mistake of my imagination, but I thought that the face 
had as dull and despairing an expression as that of a poet 
dying without having written the work which he expected 
to establish his reputation, and seized by the pitiless 
death-rattle while endeavoring to dictate it. 

‘‘I am talking to you at length about this tapestry, 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


317 


certainly at a greater length than the importance of the 
subject demands; but that fantastic world created by the 
workers in high warp is a thing which has always str-angely 
preoccupied me. 

am passionately fond of its imaginary vegetation, 
the flowers and plants which have no existence in reality, 
the forests of unknown trees wherein wander unicorns 
and snowy caprimules and stags with golden crucifixes 
between their antlers, and commonly pursued by red- 
bearded hunters in Saracen costume. 

^‘When I v^as a child I scarcely ever entered a tapes- 
tried chamber without experiencing a kind of shiver, and 
when there I hardly dared to stir. 

All the figures standing upright against the wall, and 
deriving a sort of fantastic life from the undulation of the 
material and the play of light, seemed to me so many 
spies engaged in watching my actions in order to give an 
account of them at a proper time and place, and I would 
not have eaten a stolen apple or cake in their presence. 

How many things would these grave personages have 
to tell could they open their lips of red thread, and could 
sounds penetrate into the concha of their embroidered 
ears! Of how many murders, treasons, infamous adulter- 
ies and monstrosities of all kinds are they not silent and 
impassible witnesses! 

<<But let us leave the tapestry and return to our story. 

‘ Alcibiades, I will have my aunt informed of your 
arrival. ’ 

‘‘^Oh! there is no great hurry about that, my dear 
sister; let us sit down first of all and talk a little. I have 
to introduce to you a gentleman, Theodore de S^rannes, 
who will spend some time here. I have no need to rec- 
ommend you to give him a hearty welcome; he is himself 
a sufficient recommendation.’ (I am telling you what he 
said; do not accuse me unreasonably of conceit.) 


3i8 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


“The fair one slightly bent her head as though to give 
assent, and we spoke of something else. 

“While conversing, I looked at her minutely, and ex- 
amined her with more attention than I had found possible 
until then. 

“ She was perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four years 
of age, and her mourning was most becoming to her; 
truth to tell, she had not a very lugubrious or disconsolate 
appearance, and I suspect that she would have eaten the 
ashes of her Mausolus in her soup like rhubarb. I do 
not know whether she had wept plenteously for her de- 
ceased spouse; if so, there was, at all events, little ap- 
pearance of it, and the pretty cambric handkerchief which 
she held in her hand was as perfectly dry as it was pos- 
sible to be. 

“Her eyes were not red, but, on the contrary, were the 
brightest and' most brilliant in the world, and you 
would have sought in vain on her cheeks for the furrow 
where her tears had flowed; there were in fact only two 
little dimples hollowed by an habitual smile, and it is 
right to say that, for a widow, her teeth were very fre- 
quently to be seen — certainly not a disagreeable sight, 
for they were small and very regular. I esteemed her at 
the very first for not having believed that, because a 
husband had died, she was obliged to discolor her eyes 
and give herself a violet nose. I was also grateful to her 
for not assuming a doleful little air, and for speaking 
naturally, with her sonorous and silvery voice, without 
drawling her words and breaking her phrases with vir- 
tuous sighs. 

“ This appeared to me in very good taste; I judged 
her from the first to be a woman of sense, as indeed she 
is. 

“She was well made, with a very becoming hand and 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


319 


foot; her black costume was arranged with all possible 
coquettishness, and so gaily that the lugubriousness of 
the color completely disappeared, and she might have 
gone to a ball dressed as she was without any one con- 
sidering it strange. If ever I marry and become a 
widow, I shall ask for a pattern of her dress, for it be- 
comes her angelicalfy. 

‘‘After some conversation we went up to see the old 
aunt. 

“We found her seated in a large, easy-backed arm- 
chair, with a little stool under her foot, amd beside her 
and old dog, bleared and sullen, which raised its black 
muzzle at our arrival, and greeted us with a very un- 
friendly growl. 

“I have never looked at any old woman without hor- 
ror. My mother died when quite young; no doubt, if I 
had seen her slowly grov/ing old, and seen her features 
becoming distorted in an imperceptible progression, I 
should have quietly come to be used to it. In my child- 
hood I was surrounded only by young and smiling faces, 
so that I have preserved an insurmountable antipathy to- 
wards old people. Hence I shuddered when the beautiful 
widow touched the dowager’s yellow forehead with her 
pure, vermilion lips. It is what I could not undertake 
to do. I know that I shall be like her when I am sixty 
years old; but it is all the same, I cannot help it, and I 
pray God that He may make me die young like my 
mother. 

“Nevertheless, this old woman has retained some 
simple and majestic traces of her former beauty which 
prevented her from falling into that roast-apple ugliness 
which is the portion of women who have been only pretty 
or simply fresh; her eyes, though terminating at their 
corners in claws of wrinkles, and covered with large, soft 


3^0 MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 

eyelids, still possessed a few sparks of their early fire, 
and you could see that in the last reign they must have 
darted dazzling lightnings of passion. Her thin and 
delicate nose, somewhat curved like the beak of a bird of 
prey, gave to her profile a sort of serious grandeur, which 
was tempered by the indulgent smile of her Austrian lip, 
painted with carmine, after the fashion'of the last cent- 
ury. 

‘‘Her costume was old-fashioned without being ridicu- 
lous, and was in perfect harmony with her face; for head- 
dress she had a simple mob-cap, white, with small lace; her 
long, thin hands, which you could see had been very 
beautiful, trembled in mittens without either fingers or 
thumb; a dress of dead-leaf color, figured with flower- 
ings of deeper hue, a black mantle and an apron of pig- 
eon’s neck paduasoy, completed her attire. 

“Old women should always dress in this way, and 
have sufficient respect for their approaching death not to 
harness themselves with feathers, garlands of flowers, 
bright-colored ribbons and a thousand baubles which are 
becoming only to extreme youth. It is vain for them to 
make advances to life, life will have no more of them; 
with the expenses to which they put themselves, they are 
like superannuated courtesans who plaster themselves 
with red and white, and are spurned on the pavement by 
drunken muleteers with kicks and insults. 

“The old lady received us with that exquisite 
ease and politeness which is the gift of those who be- 
longed to the old court, and the secret of which seemingly is 
being lost from day to day, like so many other excellent 
secrets, and with a voice which, broken and tremulous 
as it was, still possessed great sweetness. 

“I appeared to please her greatly, and she looked at 
me for a very long time with much attention and with 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


321 


apparently deep emotion. A tear formed in the corner 
of her eye and crept slowly down one of her great wrinkles, 
wherein it was lost and dried. She asked me to excuse 
her and told me that I was very like a son of hers who 
had been killed in the army. 

“Owing to this real or imaginary likeness, the whcle 
time that I stayed at the mansion, I was treated by the 
worthy dame with extraordinary and quite maternal kind- 
ness. I discovered more charms in her than I should 
have at first believed possible, for the greatest pleasure 
that elderly people can give me is never to speak to me, 
and to go away when I arrive. 

“I shall not give you a detailed account of my daily 

doings at R . If I have been somewhat diffuse 

through all this commencement, and have sketched you 
these two or three physiognomies of persons or places 
with some care, it is because some very singular though 
very natural things befell me there, things which I ought 
to have foreseen when assuming the dress of a man. 

“ My natural levity caused me to be guilty of an indis- 
cretion of which I cruelly repent, for it has filled a good 
and beautiful soul with a perturbation which I cannot al- 
lay without discovering what I am and compromising 
myself seriously. 

“In order to appear perfectly like a man, and to divert 
myself a little, I thought that I could not do better than 
woo my friend’s sister. It appeared very funny to me to 
throw myself on all fours when she dropped her glove 
and restore it to her with profound obeisances, to bend 
over the back of her easy-chair with an adorably langor- 
ous little air, and to drop a thousand and one of the most 
charming madrigals into the hollow of her ear. As soon 
as she wished to pass from one room to another I would 
gracefully offer her my hand; if she mounted on horse- 

Maupin— 20 


322 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


back I held the stirrup, and when walking I was always 
by her side; in the evening I read to her and sang with 
her; in brief, I performed all the duties of a ^ cavaliere 
servente ’ with scrupulous exactness. 

“I pretended everything that I had seen lovers do, 
which amused me and made me laugh like the true mad- 
cap that I am, when I was alone in my room, and re- 
flected on all the impertinent things I had just uttered in 
the most serious tone in the world. 

Alcibiades and the old marchioness appeared to view 
this intimacy with pleasure and very often left us to- 
gether. I sometimes regretted that I was not really a 
man, that I might have profited better by it; had I been 
one, the matter would have been in my own hands, for 
our charming widow seemed to have totally forgotten the 
deceased, or, if she did remember him, she would will- 
ingly have been faithless to his memory. 

After beginning in this fashion I could not honorably 
draw back again, and it was very difficult to effect a re- 
treat with arms and baggage; yet I could not go beyond 
a certain limit, nor had I much knowledge of how to be 
amiable except in words. I hoped to be able to reach 
in this way the end of the month which I was to spend 

at R and then to retire, promising to return, but 

without the intention of doing so. I thought that at my 
departure the fair one would console herself, and seeing 
me no more would soon forget me. 

^‘But in my sport I had aroused a serious passion, and 
things turned out differently — an illustration of a long 
well-known truth, namely, you should never play either 
with fire or with love. 

“Before seeing me. Rosette knew nothing of love. 
Married very young to a man much older than herself, 
she had never been able to feel for him more than a sort 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


323 


of filial friendship; no doubt she had been courted, but, 
extraordinary as it may appear, she had not had a lover. 
Either the gallants who had paid her attention were sorry 
seducers, or, what is more likely, her hour had not yet 
struck. Country squires and lordlings, always talking of 
fumets and leashes, hog-steers and antlers, morts and 
stags of ten, and mingling the whole with almanac cha- 
rades and madrigals mouldy with age, were certainly lit- 
tle adapted to suit her, and her virtue had not to struggle 
much to resist them. 

“ Besides, the natural gaiety and liveliness of her dis- 
position were a sufficient defence to her against love, that 
soft passion which has such a hold upon the pensive and 
melancholy; the idea which her old Tithonus had been 
able to give her of voluptuousness must have been a very 
indifferent one not to cause her to be greatly tempted to 
make still further trials, and she was placidly enjoying 
the pleasure of being a widow so soon and having still so 
many years in which to be beautiful. 

^‘But on my arrival everything was quite changed. I 
at first believed that if I had kept within the narrow limits 
of cold and scrupulous politeness towards her, she would 
not have taken much notice of me; but, in truth, the se- 
quel obliged me to admit that it would have been just the 
same, neither more nor less, and that though my sup- 
position was a very modest, it was a purely gratuitous 
one. Alas! nothing can turn aside the fatal ascendant, 
and no one can escape the good or evil influence of his 
star. 

Rosette’s destiny was to love only once in her life- 
time, and with an impossible love; she must fulfil it, and 
she will fulfil it. 

“I have been loved, O Graciosa! and it is a sweet 
thing, though it was only by a woman, and though there 


324 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


was an elemfent of pain in such an ‘rregular love which 
cannot belong to the other — oh! a very sweet thing! 
When you awake in the night and rise upon your elbow 
and say to yourself: ^Some one is thinking or dreaming 
about me; some one is occupied with my life; a move- 
ment of my eyes or lips makes the joy or the sadness of 
another creature; a word that I have chanced to let fall 
is carefully gathered up and commented on and turned 
over for whole hours; I am the pole to which a restless 
magnet points, my eye is a heaven, my mouth a paradise 
more desired than the true one; were I to die, a warm 
rain of tears would revive my ashes, and my tomb would 
be more flowery than a marriage gift; were I in danger 
some one would rush between the sword’s point and my 
breast; everything would be sacrificed for me! — it is 
glorious; I do not know what more one can wish for in the 
world. 

“ This thought gave me pleasure for which I reproached 
myself, since I had nothing to give in return for it all, 
but was in the position of a poor person accepting presents 
from a rich and generous friend without the hope of ever 
being able to do the like for him in turn. It charmed me 
to be adored in this way, and at times I abandoned my- 
self to it with singular complacency. From hearing 
every one call me ‘Sir,’ and seeing myself treated as 
though I were a man, I was insensibly forgetting that I 
was a woman; my disguise seemed to me my natural 
dress, and I was forgetting that I had ever worn another; 
I had ceased to remember that I was after all only a 
giddy girl who had made a sword of her needle, and cut 
one of her skirts into a pair of breeches. 

“ Many men are more womanish than I. I have little 
of woman, except her breast, a few rounder lines, and 
more delicate hands; the skirt is on my hips, and not in 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


325 


my disposition. It often happens that the sex of the 
soul does not at all correspond with that of the body, and 
this is a contradiction which cannot fail to produce great 
disorder. For my own part, for instance, if I had not 
taken this resolution— mad in appearance, but in reality 
very wise — and renounced the garments of a sex which 
is mine only materially and accidentally, I should have 
been very unhappy; I like horses, fencing, and all vio- 
lent exercises; I take pleasure in climbing and running 
about like a youth; it wearies me to remain sitting with 
my feet close together and my elbows glued to my sides, 
to cast my eyes modestly down, to speak in a little, soft, 
honeyed voice, and to pass a bit of wool ten million times 
through the holes in a canvas; I have not the least liking 
for obedience, and the expression that I mosjt frequently 
employ is, ^ I will. ’ Beneath my smooth forehead and 
silken hair move strong and manly thoughts; all the 
affected nonsense which chiefly beguiles women has never 
stirred me to any great degree, and, like Achilles dis- 
guised as a young girl, I should be ready to relinquish 
the mirror for a sword. The only thing that pleases me 
in women is their beauty; in spite of the inconveniences 
resulting from it, I would not willingly renounce my form, 
however ill-assorted it may be with the mind which it 
contain*". 

There was an element of novelty and piquancy in 
such an intrigue, and I should have been greatly 
amused by it had it not been taken seriously by poor 
Rosette. She began to love me most ingenuously 
and conscientiously, with all the power of her good and 
beautiful soul — with the love that men do not understand 
and of which they could not form even a remote concep- 
tion, tenderly and ardently, as I would wish to be loved, 
and as I should love, could I meet with the reality of my 


326 MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


dream. What a splendid treasure lost, what white trans- 
parent pearls, such as divers will never find in the casket 
of the sea! what sweet breaths, what soft sighs dispersed 
in air which might have been gathered by pure and 
amorous lips. 

^^Such a passion might have rendered a young man so 
happy! so many luckless ones, handsome, charming, gift- 
ed, full of intellect and heart, have vainly supplicated on 
their knees insensible and gloomy idols! so many good 
and tender souls have in despair flung themselves into 
the arms of courtesans, or have silently died away like 
lamps in tombs, who might have been rescued from de 
bauchery and death by a sincere love. 

^^What whimsicality is there in human destiny! and 
what a jesture is chance! 

‘‘What so many others had eagerly longed for came to 
me, to me who did not and could not desire it. A 
capricious young girl takes a fancy to ramble about the 
country in man’s dress in order to obtain some knowledge 
as to what she may depend upon in the matter of her 
future lovers; she goes to bed at an inn with a worthy 
brother who conducts her with the tip of his finger to 
his sister, who finds nothing better to do than fall in love 
like a puss, like a dove, like all that is most amorous and 
languorous in the world. It is very evident that, if I had 
been a young man and this state of things might have 
been of some service to me, it would have been quite 
different, and the lady would have abhorred me. For- 
tune loves thus to give slippers to those who have 
v/ooden legs, and gloves to those who have no hands; 
the inheritance which might have enabled you to live at 
your ease usually comes to you on the day of your death. 

“Sometimes, though not so often as she would have 
wished, I visited Rosette at her bedside; usually she re- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


327 


ceived only when she was up, but this rule was over- 
looked in my favor. 

‘‘She would stretch out her litttle hand for me to kiss 
— and I confess that I did not kiss it without pleasure, 
for it is very smooth, very white, exquisitely scented, 
and softly tender with incipient moisture; I could feel it 
quiver and contract beneath my lips, the pressure of 
which I would maliciously prolong. Then Rosette, quite 
moved and with a look of entreaty, would turn towards 
me her long eyes laden with love and bathed in human 
and transparent light, and let her pretty head, raised a 
little for my better reception, fall back upon her pillow. 
Certainly any one in a condition to venture might have 
ventured much; he w^ould surely have met with gratitude 
for his temerity, and thankfulness for having skipped 
some chapters of the romance. 

“I used to remain an hour or two with her, without 
relinguishing the hand I had replaced on the coverlet; 
we had charming and interminable talks, for although 
Rosettte was very much preoccupied with her love, she 
believed herself too sure of success to lose much of her 
freedom and playfulness of disposition. Only now and 
then would her passion cast a transparent veil of sweet 
melancholy upon her gaiety, and this rendered her still 
more pleasing. 

“In fact, it would have been an unheard-of thing that 
a young beginner, such as I was to all appearance, 
should not have deemed himself very well off with such 
good fortune and have profited by it to the best of his 
ability. Rosette, indeed, was by no means one likely to 
encounter great cruelties, and not knowing more about 
me, she counted on her charms and on my youth in de- 
fault of my love. 

“Nevertheless, as the situation was beginning to be 


328 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


prolonged beyond its natural limits, she became uneasy 
about it, and scarcely could a redoubling* of flattering 
phrases and fine protestations restore her to her for- 
mer state of unconcern. Two things astonished her in 
me, and she noticed contradictions in my conduct which 
she was unable to reconcile; they were my warmth of 
speech and my coldness of action. 

‘‘You know better than any one, my dear Graciosa, 
that my friendship has all the characteristics of a passion; 
it is sudden, eager, keen, exclusive, with love even to 
jealousy, and my friendship for Rosette was almost 
exactly similar to the friendship I have for you. A mis- 
take might have been caused by less. Rosette was the 
more completely mistaken about it, because the dress I 
wore scarcely allowed of her having a different idea. 

“As I have never yet loved a man, the excess of my 
tenderness has, in a measure, found vent in my friend- 
ships with young girls and young women; I have dis- 
played the same transport and exultation in them as I do 
in everything else, for I find it impossible to be moderate 
in anything, and especially in what concerns the heart. 
In my eyes there are only tAvo classes of people — those 
whom I worship and those whom I execrate; the others 
are to me as though they did not exist, and I would urge 
my horse over them as I would over the highway; they 
are identical in my mind with pavements and milestones. 

“I am naturally expansive, and have very caressing 
manners. When walking with Rosette, I would some- 
times, forgetful of the import of such demonstrations, 
pass my arm about her person as I used to do when we 
walked together in the lonely ^.alley at the end of my 
uncle’s garden; or, perhaps, leaning on the back of her 
easy-chair while she was working embroidery, I would 
roll the fair down on the plump round nape of her neck 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


329 


between my fingers, or with the back of my hand smooth 
her beautiful hair stretched by the comb and give it ad- 
ditional lustre — or, perhaps, it would be some other of 
those endearments which, as you know, I habitually em- 
ploy with my dear friends. 

‘‘She took very good care not to attribute these car- 
resses to mere friendship. Friendship, as it is usually 
understood, does not go to such heights; but seeing that 
I went no further, she was inwardly astonished and 
scarcely knew what to think; she decided thus: that it 
was excessive timidity on my part, caused by my extreme 
youth and a lack of experience in love affairs, and that I 
must be encouraged by all kinds of advances and kind- 
nesses. 

“In consequence, she took pains to contrive for me a 
multitude of opportunities for private conversations in 
places calculated to embolden me by their solitude and 
remoteness from all noise and intrusion; she took me for 
several walks in the great woods, to try whether the 
voluptuous dreaming with which tender souls are in- 
spired by the thick and kindly shade of the forests might not 
be turned to her advantage. 

“One day, after having made me wander for a long 
time through a very picturesque park which extended for 
a great distance behind the mansion, and which was un- 
known to me with the exception of those parts which were 
in the neighborhood of the buildings, she led me, by a 
little capriciously winding path bordered with elders and 
hazel trees, to a rustic cot, a kind of charcoal-burner’s 
hut built of billets placed transversely, with a roof of reeds, 
and a door coarsely made of five or six pieces of 
roughly-planed wood, the interstices of which were stop- 
ped up with mosses and wild plants; quite close, among 
the green roots of tall ashes with silvery bark, dotted here 


330 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


and there with dark patches, gushed a vigorous spring, 
which, a few feet further on, fell over two marble steps 
into a basin filled with cress of more than emerald green. 

^‘At places where there was no cress might be seen 
fine sand as white as snow; the water had the transpar- 
ency of crystal and the coldness of ice; issuing suddenly 
from the ground, and never touched by the faintest sun- 
ray, beneath those impenetrable shades, it had no time 
to become warm or troubled. In spite of its crudity I 
love such spring water, and, seeing it there to limpid, I 
could not resist a desire to drink it; I stooped down and 
took some several times in the hollow of my hand, having 
no other vessel at my disposal. 

‘‘Rosette intimated a wish to drink also of this water 
to quench her thirst, and requested me to bring her a few 
drops, for she dared not, she said, stoop.down far enough 
to reach it herself. I plunged both my hands, which I 
had joined together as accurately as possible, into the 
^ clear fountain, then raised them like a cup to Rosette’s 
lips, and kept them thus until she had drained the water 
contained in them — not a long time, for there was very 
little, and that little trickled through my fingers, however 
tightly I closed them; it made a very pretty group, and 
it is almost a pity that there was no sculptor present to 
take a sketch of it. 

“When she had almost finished, and my hand was 
close to her lips, she could not refrain from kissing it, in 
such a way, however, as to make it look like an act of 
suction for the purpose of draining the last pearl of 
water gathered in my palm; but I was not deceived b}^ 
it, and the charming blush which suddenly overspread 
her countenance betrayed her plainly enough. 

“She took my arm again, and we proceeded towards 
the cot. The fair one walked as close to me as possible. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


331 


and when speaking to me leaned over in such a way that 
her bosom rested entirely on my sleeve — a very cunning 
position, and one capable of disturbing any one else but 
me; I could feel its pure firm outline and soft warmth 
perfectly well — nay, I cOuld even remark a hurried undu- 
lating motion which, whether affected or real, was none 
the less flattering and engaging. 

‘^In this way we reached the door of the cot, which I 
opened with a kick, and I was certainly not prepared for 
the sight that met my eyes. I had thought that the hut 
was carpeted with rushes with a mat on the floor and a 
few stools to rest on. Not at all. 

‘‘It was a boudoir furnished with all imaginable ele- 
gance. The frieze panels represented the gallantest 
scenes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Salmacisand Herma- 
phrodite, Venus, and Adonis, Apollo and Daphne, and 
other mythological loves in bright lilac camaieu; the piers 
were formed of pompon roses very delicately sculptured, 
and little daisies, which, with a refinement of luxury, had 
only their hearts gilded, their leaves being silvered. All 
the furniture was edged with silver cord which relieved 
a tapestry of the softest blue that could possibly be found, 
and one marvellously adapted to set off the whiteness and 
lustre of the skin; mantelpiece, consoles, and what-nots 
were laden with a thousand charming curiosities, and 
there was such a luxurious number of settees, couches 
and sofas, as pretty clearly showed that this nook was 
not designed for very austere occupations, and that cer- 
tainly no maceration went on in it. 

“A handsome rock- work clock, standing on a richly- 
inlaid pedestal, faced a large Venetian mirror, and was 
repeated in it with singular gleamings and reflections. 
It had stopped, moreover, as though it would have been 
something superfluous to mark the hours in a place in- 
tended to forget them. 


332 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


I told Rosette that this refinement of luxury pleased 
me, that I thought it in very good taste to conceal the 
greatest choiceness beneath an appearance of simplicity, 
and that I greatly approved of a woman having embroid- 
ered petticoats and lace-trimmed chemises with an outer 
covering of simple material; that to the lover whom she 
had or might have it was a delicate attention for which 
he could not be sufficiently grateful, and that it was un- 
questionably better to put a diamond into a nut, than a 
nut into a golden box. 

‘^To prove to me that she was of my opinion. Rosette 
raised her dress a little and showed me the edge of a pet- 
ticoat very richly embroidered with large flowers and 
leaves; but I did not ask to see whether the splendor of 
the chemise corresponded with that of the petticoat. It 
is probable that it was amply luxurious. Rosette let the 
fold of her dress fall again, vexed at not having shown 
more. 

^‘Nevertheless, the exhibition had been sufficient to 
display the beginning of a perfectly turned calf. The leg 
which she held out in order to show off her petticoat to 
better advantage was indeed miraculously delicate and 
graceful in its neat well-drawn stocking of pearl-gray silk, 
and the little heeled shoe, adorned with a tuft of ribbons 
in which it terminated, was like the glass slipper worn 
by Cinderella. I paid her very sincere compliments 
about it, and told her that I had never known a prettier 
leg or a smaller foot, and that I did not think they could 
possibly be of a better shape. To which she replied with 
charming and lively frankness and ingenuousness: 

“ ‘Tis true.’ 

“Then she went to a panel contrived in the wall, took 
out one or two flagons of liquors and some plates of sweet- 
meats and cakes, placed the; whole on a little round table. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


333 


and came and sat down beside me in a somewhat narrow 
easy-chair, so that, in order not to be very uncomfortable, 
I was obliged to pass my arm behind her waist. As she 
had both hands free, and I had just my left to make use 
of, she filled my glass herself, and put fruits and sweets 
upon my plate; and soon even, seeing that I was rather 
awkward, she said to me: ‘Come, leave it alone; I am 
going to feed you, child, since you are not able to eat all 
by yourself.’ Then she herself conveyed the morsels to 
my mouth, and forced me to swallow them more quickly 
than I wished, pushing them in with her pretty fingers, 
just as people do with birds that are crammed, and laugh- 
ing very much over it. 

“I could scarcely dispense with paying her fingers 
back the kiss which she had lately given to the palms 
of my hands, and, as though to prevent me from doing 
so, but really to enable me to impart a greater pressure 
to my kiss, she struck my mouth two or three times with 
the back of her hand. 

“She had drunk a few drops of Creme des Barbades, 
with a glass of Canary, and I about as much. It was 
certainly not a great deal; but it was sufficient to enliven 
a couple of women accustomed to drink scarcely any- 
thing stronger than water. Rosette leaned backwards, 
throwing herself across my arm. She had cast aside her 
mantle, and the upper part of her bosom, strained and 
stretched by this arched position, could be seen; it was 
enchantingly delicate and transparent in tone, while 
its shape was one of marvellous daintiness and solidity 
combined. I contemplated her for some time with in- 
definable emotion and pleasnre, and the reflection oc- 
curred to me that men were more favored in their 
loves than we, seeing that we gave them possession of 
the most charming treasures while they had nothing 
similar to offer us. 


334 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


^‘What a pleasure it must be to let their lips wander 
over this smooth fine skin, and these rounded curves 
which seem to go out to meet the kiss and challenge it! 
this satin flesh, these undulating and mutually involving 
lines, this silky hair so soft to the touch; what exhaust- 
less sources of delicate voluptuousness which we do not 
possess in common with men! Our caresses can scarcely 
be other than passive, and yet it is a greater pleasure to 
give than to receive. 

These are remarks which undoubtedly I should not 
have made last year, and I might have seen all the 
bosoms and shoulders in the world without caring 
whether their shape was good or bad; but, since I have 
laid aside the dress belonging to my sex and have lived 
with young men, a feeling which was unknown to me has 
developed within me — the feeling of beauty. Women 
are usually denied it, I know not why, for at first sight 
they would seem better able to judge of it than men; but 
as they are the possessors of beauty, and self-knowledge 
is more difficult than that of any other description, it is 
not surprising that they know nothing at all about it. 

‘^Commonly, if one woman thinks another woman 
pretty, you may be sure that the latter is very ugly, and 
that no man will take any notice of her. On the other 
hand, all women whose beauty and grace are extolled by 
men are unanimously considered abominable and affected 
by the whole petticoated tribe; there are cries and 
clamors without end. If I were what I appear to be, I 
should be guided in my choiee by nothing else, and the 
disapprobation of women would be a sufficient certificate 
of beauty for me. 

“At present I love and know beauty; the dress I wear 
separates me from my sex, and takes away from me all 
species of rivalry; I am able to judge it better than an- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


335 


other. I am no longer a woman, but I am not yet a 
man, and desire will not blind me so far as to make me 
take puppets for idols; I can see coldly without any 
prejudice for or against, and my position is as perfectly 
disinterested as it could possibly be. 

‘‘The length and delicacy of the eyelashes, the trans- 
parency of the temples, the limpidity of the crystalline, 
the curvings of the ear, the tone and quality of the hair, 
the aristocracy of foot and hand, the more or less slender 
joints of leg and wrist, a thousand things of which I used 
to take no heed, but which constitute real beauty and 
prove purity of race, guide me in my estimates, and 
scarcely admit of a mistake. I believe that if I had said 
of a woman: ‘Indeed, she is not bad!’ you might ac- 
cept her with your eyes shut. 

“By a very natural consequence I understand pictures 
better than I did before, and though I have but a very 
superficial tincture of the masters, it would be very diffi- 
cult to make me pass a bad work for a good one; I find 
a deep and singular charm in this study; for, like every- 
thing else in the world, beauty, moral or physical, re- 
quires to be studied, and cannot be penetrated all at once. 

“ But let us return to Rosette; the transition from this 
subject to her is not a difficult one, for they are two ideas 
which are bound up in each other. 

“As I have said, the fair one had thrown herself back 
across my arm and her head was resting against my 
shoulder; emotion shaded her beautiful cheeks with a 
tender rose-color which was admirably set off by the deep 
black of a very coquettishly placed little patch; her teeth 
gleamed through her smile like raindrops in the depths of 
a poppy, and the humid splendor of her large eyes was 
still further heightened by her half-drooping lashes; a ray 
of light caused a thousand metallic lustres to play on her 


336 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


silky clouded hair, some locks of which had escaped and 
were rolling in ringlets along her plump round neck, and 
relieving its warm whiteness; a few little downy hairs, 
more mutinous than the rest, had got loose from the 
mass, and were twisting themselves in capricious spirals, 
gilded with singular reflections, and traversed by the 
light, assuming all the shades of the prism; you would 
have thought that they were such golden threads as sur- 
round the heads of the virgins in the old pictures. We 
both kept silence, and I amused myself with tracing her 
little azure-blue veins through the nacreous transparency 
of her temples, and the soft insensible depression of the 
down at the extremities of her eyebrows. 

^‘The fair one seemed to be inwardly meditating and 
to be lulling herself in dreams of infinite happiness; her 
arms hung down her body as undulating and as soft as 
loosened scarfs; her head bent back more and more as 
though the muscles supporting it had been cut or were 
too feeble for their task. She had gathered up her two 
little feet beneath her petticoat, and had succeeded in 
crouching down altogether in the corner of the lounge 
that I was occupying, in such a way that, although it was 
a very narrow piece of furniture, there was a large empty 
space on the other side. 

‘^Her easy, supple body modelled itself on mine like 
wax, following its external outline with the greatest pos- 
sible accuracy. Water would not have crept into all the 
sinuosity of line with more exactness. Clinging thus to 
my side, she suggested the double stroke which painters 
give their drawings on the side of the shadow, in order 
to render them more free and full. Only with a woman 
in love can there be such undulations and entwinings. 
Ivy and willow are a long way behind. 

‘‘The soft warmth of her body penetrated through 


iMADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


337 


her garments and mine; a thousand magnetic currents 
streamed around her; her whole life seemed to have left 
her altogether and to have entered into me. Every min- 
ute she was more languishing, expiring, yielding; a light 
sweat stood in beads upon her lustrous brow; her eyes 
grew moist and two or three times she made as though 
she would raise her hands to hide them; but half-way 
her wearied arms fell back upon her knees, and she could 
not succeed in doing so; a big tear overflowed from her 
eyelid and rolled along her burning cheek where it was 
soon dried. 

“ My situation was becoming very embarrassing and 
tolerably ridiculous; I felt that I must look enormously 
stupid, and this provoked me extremely, although no al- 
ternative was in my power. Enterprising conduct was 
forbidden me, and such was the only kind that would 
have been suitable. I was too sure of meeting with no 
resistance to risk it, and I was, in fact, at my wit’s end. 
To pay compliments and repeat madrigals would have 
been excellent at the beginning, but nothing would have 
appeared more insipid at the stage that we had reached; 
to get up and go out would have been unmannerly in the 
extreme; and besides I am not sure that Rosette would 
not have played the part of Potiphar’s wife and held me 
by the corner of my cloak. 

could not have assigned any virtuous motive for 
my resistance; and then, I confess it to my shame, the 
scene, equivocal as its nature was for me, was not with- 
out a charm which detained me more than it should have 
done; this ardent desire kindled me with its flame; I even 
wished to be, as I actually appeared to be, a man, that I 
might crown this love, and I greatly regretted that Ro- 
sette was deceived. My breathing became hurried, I 
felt blushes rising to my face, and I was little less troubled 

Hau; in— 21 


338 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


than my poor lover. The idea of our similitude in sex 
gradually faded away, leaving behind only a vague idea 
of pleasure; my gaze grew dim, my lips trembled, and, 
had Rosette been a man instead of what she was, she 
would assuredly have made a very easy conquest of me. 

‘‘At last, unable to bear it any longer, she got up 
abruptly with a sort of spasmodic movement, and began 
to walk about the room with great activity; then she 
stopped before the mirror and adjusted some locks of her 
hair which had lost their folds. During this promenade 
I ci*t a poor figure, and scarcely knew how to look. 

“She stopped before me and appeared to reflect. 

“She thought that it was only a desperate timidity 
that restrained me, and that I was more of a school-boy 
than she had thought me at first. Beside herself and ex- 
cited to the last degree of exasperation, she would try one 
supreme effort and stake all on the result at the risk of 
losing the game. 

“ She came up to me, sat down on my knees more 
quickly than lightning, passed her arms round my neck, 
crossed her hands behind my head, and clung with her 
lips to mine in a furious embrace. 

“ Rosette did not release my mouth; her lips enveloped 
mine, her teeth stuck against my teeth, our breaths were 
mingled. I drew back for an instant, and turned my 
head aside two or three times to avoid this kiss; but re- 
sistless attraction made me again advance, and I returned 
it with nearly as much ardor as she had given it. I 
scarcely know how it would all have ended had not a loud 
barking been heard outside the door, together with the 
sound of scratching feet. The door yielded, and a hand- 
some white grey-hound came yelping and gamboling into 
the cot. 

“Rosette rose ip suddenly, and with a bound sprang 












MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


339 


to the end of the room. The handsome white grey-hound 
leaped gleefully and joyously about her, and tried to reach 
her hands in order to lick them; she was so much agi- 
tated that she found great difficulty in arranging her 
mantle upon her shoulders. 

^‘This grey-hound was her brother Alcibiades’ favor- 
ite dog; it never left him, and whenever it appeared, its 
master to a certainty was not far off; this is what had so 
greatly frightened poor Rosette. 

‘^In fact Alcibiades himself entered a minute later, 
booted and spurred, and whip in hand. ‘Ah! there you 
are,’ said he; ‘ I have been looking for you for an hour 
past, and I should certainly not have found you had not 
my good grey-hound Snug unearthed you in your hiding- 
place.’ And he cast a half-serious, half-playful look up- 
on his sister which made her blush up to the eyes. ‘ Ap- 
parently you must have had very knotty subjects to treat 
of to retire into such profound solitude ? You were no 
doubt talking about theology and the twofold nature of 
the soul ? 

“‘Oh! dear no; our occupation was not nearly so sub- 
lime; we were eating cakes and talking about the fashions 
— that is all. ’ 

“ ‘ I don’t believe a word of it; you appeared to me to 
be deep in some sentimental dissertation; but to divert 
you from 'your vaporish conversation, I think that it 
would be a good thing if you came and took a ride with 
me. I have a new mare that I want to try. You shall 
ride her as well, Theodore, and we will see what can be 
made of her. 

“ We went out all three together, he giving me his arm, 
and I giving mine to Rosette. The expressions on our 
faces were singularly different. Alcibiades looked 
thoughtful, I quite at ease, and Rosette excessively an- 
noyed. 


340 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


Alcibiades had arrived very opportunely for me, but 
very inopportunely for Rosette, who thus lost, or thought 
she lost, all the fruits of her skillful attacks and ingen- 
ious tactics. No progress had been made; a quarter of 
an hour later and the devil take me if I know what issue 
the adventure could have had — I cannot see one that 
would not have been impossible. Perhaps it might have 
been better if Alcibiades had not come in at the ticklish 
moment like a god in his machine; the thing must have 
ended in one way or another. During the scene I was 
two or three times on the point of acknowledging who I 
was to Rosette; but the dread of being thought an ad- 
venturess and of seeing my secret revealed kept back the 
words that were ready to escape from my lips. 

‘‘Such a state of things could not last. My de- 
parture was the only means of cutting short this bootless 
intrigue, and accordingly I announced officially at dinner 
that I should leave the very next day. Rosette, who 
was sitting beside me, nearly fainted on hearing this piece 
of news, and let her glass fall. A sudden paleness over- 
spread her beautiful face; she cast on me a mournful and 
reproachful look which made me nearly as much affected 
and troubled as she was herself. 

“The aunt raised her old wrinkled hands with a move- 
ment of painful surprise, and said in her shrill, trembling 
voice, which was even more tremulous than usual: ‘ M)) 
dear Monsieur Theodore, are you going to leave us in 
that fashion? That is not right; yesterday you did not seem 
in the least disposed to go. The post has not come, and 
so you have received no letters, and are without any 
motive. You had granted us a fortnight longer, and now 
you are taking it back; you have really no right to do so 
. — what has been given cannot be taken away again. See 
how Rosette is looking at you, and how angry she is with 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


341 


you; I warn you that I shall be at least as angry as she 
is, and look quite as sternly at you, and a stern face at 
sixty-eight is a little more terrible than one at twenty- 
three. See to what you are voluntarily exposing yourself; 
the wrath both of aunt and niece, and all on account of 
some caprice which has suddenly entered your head at 
dessert.’ 

‘‘ Alcibiades, giving the table a great blow with his 
fist, swore that he would barricade the doors of the man- 
sion and hamstring my horse sooner than let me go. 

Rosette cast another upon me, and one so sad and 
supplicating that nothing short of the ferocity of a tiger 
that had been fasting for a week could have failed to be 
moved by it. I did not withstand it, and though it gave 
me singular annoyance, I made a solemn promise to stay. 
Dear Rosette would willingly have fallen on my neck 
and kissed me on the mouth for this kindness; Alcibia- 
des enclosed my hand in his huge one and shook my arm , 
so violently that he nearly dislocated my shoulder, made 
my rings oval instead of round, and cut three of my 
fingers somewhat deeply. 

‘‘The old lady, rejoicing, took an immense pinch of 
snuff. 

“Rosette, however, did not completely recover her 
gaiety; the idea that I might go away and that I wished 
to do so, an idea which had never yet come clearly be- 
fore her mind, plunged her deep in thought. The color 
which had been chased from her cheeks by the announce- 
ment of my departure did not return to them with the 
same brilliance as before; there still was paleness on her 
cheek and disquiet in the depths of her soul. My con- 
duct towards her surprised her more and more. After 
the marked advances which she had made, she could not 
understand the motives which induced me to put so 


342 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


much restraint into my relations with her, her object was 
to lead me up to a perfectly decisive engagement before 
my departure, not doubting that afterwards she would 
find it extremely easy to keep me as long as she liked. 

^‘In this she was right, and had I not been a woman, 
her calculation would have been correct; for, whatever 
may have been said about the satiety of pleasure and the 
distaste which commonly follows possession, every man 
whose heart is at all in the right place, and who is not 
miserably used up and without resource, feels his love in- 
creased by his good fortune, and frequently the best 
means of retaining a lover who is ready to leave you is to 
surrender yourself unreservedly to him. 

Rosette intended to bring me to something decisive 
before my deparrure. Knowing how difficult it is to sub- 
sequently take up a liaison just where it had been drop- 
ped, and besides not being at all sure of finding me again 
under such favorable circumstances, she neglected no op- 
portunity that presented itself of placing me in a position 
to speak out clearly and abandon the evasive demeanor 
behind which I had entrenched myself. As on my part, 
I had the most formal intention of avoiding every 
species of meeting similar to that in the rustic pavillion, 
and yet could not, without being ridiculous, affect much 
coolness towards Rosette and assume girlish prudery in 
my relations with her, I scarcely knew how to behave, 
and tried always to have a third person with us. 

^‘Rosette, on the contrary, did everything in her 
power to secure being alone with me, and, as the mansion 
was at a distance from the town and seldom visited by 
the neighboring nobility, she frequently succeeded in her 
design. My obtuse resistance saddened and surprised 
her; there were moments when she had doubts and hesi- 
tations about the power of her charms, and, seeing her- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


343 


self so little loved, she was sometimes not far from be- 
lieving herself ugly. Then she would redouble her at- 
tention and coquetry, and although her mourning did not 
permit her to make use of all the resources of the toilet, 
she nevertheless knew how to give it grace and variety in 
such a manner as to be twice or thrice as charming every 
day — which is saying a great deal. She tried everything; 
she was playful, melancholy, tender, impassioned, kind, 
coquettish, and even affected; she put on in succession 
all those adorable masks which become women so well 
that it is impossible to tell whether they are veritable 
masks or real faces — she assumed eight or ten contrasted 
individualities one after another in order to see which 
pleased me, and fix upon it. In herself alone she pro- 
vided me with a complete seraglio wherein I had only to 
throw the handkerchief; but she had, of course, no 
success. 

‘^The failure of all these stratagems threw her into a 
state of profound stupefaction. She would, indeed, have 
turned Nestor’s brain, and melted the ice of the chaste 
Hippolytus himself— and I appeared to be anything but 
Nestor or Hippolytus. I am young, and I had a lofty 
and determined air, boldness of speech, and everywhere 
except in solitary interviews, a resolute countenance. 

‘‘ She might have thought that all the witches of Thrace 
and Thessaly had cast their spells upon my person, or 
that I was at least unmanned, and have formed a most 
detestable opinion of my virility, which is in fact poor 
enough. Apparently, however, the idea did not occur to 
her and she attributed this singular reserve only to my 
lack of love for her. 

<‘The days passed away without any advancement of 
her interests, and she was visibly affected by it; an ex- 
pression of restless sadness had taken the place of the 


344 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


ever fresh-blooming smile on her lips; the corners of her 
mouth, so joyously arched, had become sensibly lower, 
and formed a firm and serious line; a few little veins ap- 
peared in a more marked fashion on her tender eyelids; 
her cheeks, lately so like the peach, had now nothing of 
it left save its imperceptible velvet down. I often saw 
her, from my window, crossing the garden in a morning 
gown; scarcely raising her feet, she would walk as though 
she were gliding along, both arms loosely crossed upon 
her breast, her head bent more than a willow-branch 
dipping into the water, and with something undulating 
and sinking about her like a drapery which is too long and 
the edge of which touches the ground. At such mo- 
ments she looked like one of the lovely women of an- 
tiquity, victims to the wrath of Venus, and furiously as- 
saulted by the pitiless goddess; it is thus, to my fancy, 
that Psyche must have been when she had lost Cupid. 

^‘Onthe days when she did not endeavor to vanish 
my coldness and reluctance, her love had a simple and 
primitive manner which might have charmed me; it was 
a silent and confiding surrender, a chaste facility of 
caress, an exhaustless abundance and plentitude of 
heart, all the treasures of a fine nature poured forth with- 
out reserve. She had none of that bitterness and mean- 
ness to be seen in nearly all women, even in those that 
are the best endowed; she sought no disguise, and tran- 
quilly suffered me to see the whole extent of her passion. 
Her self-love did not revolt for an instant at my failure 
to respond to so many advances, for pride leaves the 
heart on the day that love enters it; and if ever any- 
one was truly loved, I was loved by Rosette. 

“She suffered, but without complaint or bitterness, 
and she attributed the failure of her attempts only to her- 
self. Nevertheless her paleness increased every day; a 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


345 


mighty combat had been waged on the battle-field of her 
cheeks between the lilies and the roses, and the latter 
had been decisively routed; it distressed me, but in all 
truth I was less able than anyone to remedy it. The 
more gentle and affectionate my words and the more 
caressing my manner, the more deeply I plunged into 
her heart the barbed arrow of impossible love. To com- 
fort her to-day I made ready a much greater despair for 
the future; my remedies poisoned her wound while 
appearing to sooth it. I repented in a measure of all the 
agreeable things I had ever said to her, and, owing to my 
extreme friendship for her, I would fain have discovered 
the means to make her hate me. Disinterestedness 
could not be carried further, for such a result would 
unquestionably have greatly grieved me — but it would 
have been better. 

I made two or three attempts to speak harshly to her, 
but I soon returned to madrigals, for I dread her tears 
even more than her smile. On such occasions, although 
the honesty of my intention fully acquitted me in my con- 
science, I was more touched than I should have been, 
and felt something not far removed from remorse. A 
tear can scarcely be dried except by a kiss; the office can- 
not decently be left to a handkerchief, be it of the finest 
cambric in the world. I undid what I had done, the tear 
was quickly forgotten, more quickly than the kiss, and 
there always ensued an increase of embarrassment for 
me. 

‘ ‘ Rosette, seeing that I am going to escape her, again 
fastens obstinately and miserably upon the remnants of 
her hope and my position is growing more and more 
complicated. The strange sensation which I experienced 
in the little hermitage, and the inconceivable confusion 
into which I was thrown by the ardent caresses of my 


346 


MADEMOTSELLE DE MAUPIN 


fair mistress, have been several times renewed though 
with less violence; and often when seated beside Ro- 
sette with her hand in mine, and listening to her speak 
to me in her soft cooing voice, I fancy that I am a man 
as she believes me to be, and that it is pure cruelty on my 
part not to respond to her love. 

^‘One evening by some chance or other, I happened to 
be alone with the old lady in the green-room; she had 
some tapestry work in her hand, for, in spite of her sixty- 
eight years, she never remained idle, wishing, as she said, 
to finish before she died a task which she had commenced 
and at which she had now wrought for a long time. 
Feeling somewhat fatigued, she laid her work aside and 
lay back in her large easy-chair. She looked at me very 
attentively, and her gray eyes sparkled through her 
spectacles with strange vivacity; she passed her hand 
two or three times across her wrinkled forehead, and 
appeared to be reflecting deeply. The recollection of 
times that were no more and that she regretted imparted 
an expression of emotion to her face. I did not speak 
lest I should disturb her in her thoughts, and the silence 
lasted for some minutes. At last she broke it. 

‘They are Henri’s — my dear Henri’s very eyes; the 
same humid and brilliant gaze, the same carriage 
of the head, the sweet and proud physiognomy; one 
would think it were he. You cannot imagine the extent 
of this likeness. Monsieur Theodore; when I see you I 
cannot believe that Henri is dead; I think that 
he has only been on a long journey, and has now at last 
come back. You have given me much pleasure and 
much pain, Theodore — pleasure by reminding me of my 
poor Henri, and pain by showing me how great has been 
my loss; sometimes I have taken you for his phantom. 
I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that you are going 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


347 

to leave us; it seems to me like losing my Henri once 
more. 

told her that if it were really possible for me to re- 
main longer I should do so with pleasure, but that my 
stay had already been prolonged far beyond the limits it 
should have had; besides, I quite expected to return, 
and I should retain memories of the mansion far too 
agreeable to forget it so quickly. 

^However sorry I may be at your departure. Mon- 
sieur Theodore,’ she resumed pursuing her own train of 
thought, ^ there is some one here who will feel it more 
than I. You understand whom I mean without my tell- 
ing you. I do not know what we shall do with Rosette 
when you are gone; but this old place is very dull. Al- 
cibiades is always hunting, and for a young girl like her, 
the society of a poor infirm woman like me is not very 
diverting.’ ^ 

Hf anyone should have regrets, it is not you, ma- 
dame, nor Rosette, but I; you are losing little, I much; 
you will easily discover society more charming than mine, 
but it is more than doubtful whether I shall ever be able 
to replace Rosette’s and yours. ’ 

do not wish to pick a quarrel with your modesty, 
my dear sir, but I know what I know, and what I say is 
fact. It will probably be a long time before we see Ma- 
dame Rosette in a good humor again, for at present her 
smiles and tears depend only on you. Her mourning is 
about to end, and it would be a pity if she laid aside her 
gaiety with her last black dress; it would be a very bad 
example, and quite contrary to natural laws. This is a 
thing which you could prevent without much trouble, and 
which you will prevent, no doubt,’ said the old lady, lay- 
ing great emphasis on the last words. 

< Unquestionably I will do all in my power that your 


348 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


dear niece may not lose her charming gaiety, since you 
suppose me to have such influence over her. Neverthe- 
less, I scarcely see what method I can adopt. ’ 

‘Oh! really, 3^ou scarcely see! What are your hand- 
some eyes for? I did not know that you were so short- 
sighted. Rosette is free; she has an income of eighty 
thousand livres wholly under her own control, and women 
twice as ugly as she is are often considered pretty. You 
are young, handsome, and, as I imagine, unmarried; it 
appears to me to be the simplest thing in the world, un- 
less you have an unsurmountable horror of Rosette, 
which it is difficult to believe — 

“ ‘Which is not and could not be the case, for her soul 
is as excellent as her person, and she is one of those who 
might be ugly without our noticing it or wishing them 
otherwise — 

“ ‘ She might be ugly with impunity and she is charm- 
ing. That is to be doubly in the right; I have no doubt 
of what you say, but she has taken the wisest course. 
So far as she is concerned I would willingly answer for 
it that there are a thousand whom she hates more than 
you, and that if she were asked several times she would 
perhaps end by confessing that you do not altogether 
displease her. You have a ring on your finger which 
would suit her perfectly, for your hand is nearly as small 
as hers, and I am almost sure she would accept it with 
pleasure.’ 

“The good lady stopped for a few moments to see 
what effect her words would produce on me, and I do not 
know whether she had reason to be satisfied with the ex- 
pression of my face. I was cruelly embarrassed and did 
not know what to reply. From the beginning of the con- 
versation I had perceived the tendency of all her insinu- 
ations; and although I almost expected what she had just 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


349 


said, I was quite surprised and confused by it; I could 
not but refuse; but what valid motives could I give for 
such a refusal? I had none, except that I was a woman; 
an excellent motive it is true, but precisely the only one 
that I was unwilling to state. 

‘‘ I could hardly fall back upon stern and ridiculous 
parents; all the parents in the world would have accepted 
such a union with enthusiasm. Had Rosette not been 
what she was, good, fair, and well-born, the eighty thous- 
livres a year would have removed all difficulty. To say 
that I did not love her would have been neither true nor 
honorable, for I did really love her very much and more 
than any woman loves a woman. I was too young to pre- 
tend that I was engaged in another quarter. What I 
thought it best to do was to let it be understood that being 
a younger son the interests of my house required me to en- 
ter the Maltese Order, and did not permit to think of 
matrimon}^, a circumstance which had caused me all the 
sorrow in the world since I had seen Rosette. 

‘‘This reply was not worth much, and I was perfectly 
sensible of the fact. The old lady was not deceived by 
it, and did not regard it as definite; she thought that I 
had spoken in this way to gain time for reflection and for 
consulting my parents. Indeed, such a union was so ad- 
vantageous for me, and one so little to be expected, that 
it would not have been possible for me to refuse it even 
though I had felt little or no love for Rosette; it was a 
piece of good fortune not to be slighted. 

“I do not know whether the aunt made this overture 
at the. instance of her niece, but I am inclined to believe 
that Rosette had nothing to do with it — she loved me too 
simply and too eagerly to think of anything else but the 
immediate possession of me, and marriage would as- 
suredly have been the last of the means that she would 


350 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


have employed. The dowager, who had not failed to 
remark our intimacy, and doubtless thought it much 
greater than it was, had contrived the whole of this plan 
in her head in order to keep me near her, and as far as 
possible replace her dear son Henri, who had been killed 
in the army, and to whom, as she considered, I bear so 
striking a likeness. She had been pleased by this idea 
and had taken advantage of the moment of solitude to 
come to an explanation with me. I saw by her mien that 
she did not look upon herself as beaten, and that she in- 
tended to return soon to the charge — at which I felt ex- 
tremely annoyed. 

‘^That same night Rosette, on her part, made a last 
attempt which had such serious results that I must give 
you a separate account of it, and cannot relate it in this 
letter which is already swelled to an extravagant size. 
You will see to what singular adventures I was predes- 
tined, and how heaven had cut me out beforehand to be 
a heroine of romance; I am not quite sure, though, what 
moral could be drawn from it all — but existencies are not 
like fables, each chapter has not a rhymed sentence at 
the end. Very often the meaning of life is that it is not 
death. That is all. Good-bye, dear, I kiss you on your 
lovely eyes. You will shortly receive the continuation of 
my triumphant biography.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


Theodore — Rosalind — for I know not by what 
name to call you — I have only just seen you and I am 
writing to you. Would that I knew your woman’s name! 
it must be pleasant as honey, and hover sweeter and more 
harmonious than poetry on the lips! Never could I have 
dared to tell you this, and yet I should have died for lack 
of saying it. What I have suffered no one knows nor 
can know, nor could I myself give any but a faint idea of 
it, words will not express such anguish; I should appear 
to have turned my phrases carefully, to have striven to 
say new and singular things, and to be indulging in the 
most extravagant exaggeration when merely depicting 
what I have experienced with the help of unsatisfying 
images. 

“O Rosalind! I love you, I worship you; why is there 
not a word more expressive than that! I have never 
loved I have never worshiped any one save you; I pros- 
trate myself, I humble myself before you, and I would 
fain compel all creation to bend the knee before my idol; 
you are more to me than the whole of nature, more than 
myself, more than God — nay, it seems strange to me that 
God does not descend from heaven to become your slave. 
Where you are not, all is desolate, all is dead, all is dark, 
you alone people the world for me; you are life, sunshine 

351 


352 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


— you are everything. Your smile makes the and 
your sadness the night; the spheres follow the niovements 
of your body, and the celestial harmonies are gilded by 
you, O my cherished queen! O my glorious and real 
dream! You are clothed with splendor, and swim cease- 
lessly in radiant effluence. 

I have known you scarcely three months, but I have 
long loved you. Before seeing you, I languished for love 
of you; I called you, sought for you, and despaired of 
ever meeting with you in my path, for I knew I could 
never love any other woman. How many times have you 
appeared to me — at the window of the mysterious man- 
sion leaning in melancholy fashion on your elbow in the 
balcony and casting the petals of some flower to the wind, 
or else a petulant Amazon on your Turkish horse, whiter 
than snow, galloping through the dark avenues of the 
forest! It was indeed your proud and gentle eyes, your 
diaphanous hands, your beautiful waving hair, and your 
faint, adorably disdainful smile. Only you were less 
beautiful, for the most ardent and unbridled imagina- 
tion, the imagination of a painter and a poet, could not 
attain to the sublime poetry of this reality. 

There is in you an exhaustless spring of graces, an 
ever-gushing fountain of irresistible seductions; you are 
an ever open casket of most precious pearls, and, in 
your slightest movements, in your most forgetful gestures, 
in your most unstudied attitudes, you every moment 
throw away with royal profusion inestimable treasures of 
beauty. If the soft waving contour, if the fleeting lines 
of an attitude could be fixed and preserved in a mirror, 
the glasses before which you had passed would cause 
Raphael’s divinest canvases to be despised and be looked 
upon as tavern sign-boards. 

Every gesture, every pose of your head, every dif- 








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MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


353 


ferent aspect of your beauty, are graven with a diamond 
point upon the mirror of my soul, and nothing in the 
world could efface the deep impression; I know in what 
place the shadow was, and in what the light, the flat part 
glistening beneath the ray, and the spot where the wan- 
dering reflection was blended with the more softened tints 
of neck and cheek. I could draw you in your absence; 
the idea of you is ever placed before me. 

*‘When quite a child I would remain whole hours 
standing before the old pictures of the masters, and 
eagerly explore their dark depths. I gazed upon those 
beautiful faces of saints and goddesses whose flesh, white 
as ivory or wax, stands out so marvellously against the 
obscure backgrounds that are carbonized by the decom- 
position of the colors; I admired the simplicity and mag- 
nificence of their shape, the strange grace of their hands 
and feet, the pride and fine expression of their features 
which are at once so delicate and firm, the grandeur of the 
draperies which flutter around their divine forms, and 
the purplish folds of which seem to extend like lips to kiss 
those beauteous bodies. 

From obstinately burying my eyes beneath the veil 
of smoke thickened by ages, my sight grew dim, the out- 
lines of objects lost their precision, and a species of mo- 
tionless and dead life animated all those pale phantoms 
of vanished beauties; I ended by finding that these faces 
had a vague resemblance to the fair unknown whom I 
worshipped at the bottom of my heart; I sighed as I 
thought that she whom I was to love was perhaps one of 
them, and had been dead for three hundred years. This 
idea often affected me so far as to make me shed tears, 
and I would indulge in great anger against myself for not 
having been born in the sixteenth century, when all these 

Maupin— 22 


354 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


fair ones had lived. I thought it unpardonable awkward- 
ness and clumsiness on my part. 

“When I grew older the sweet phantom beset me still 
more closely. I continually saw it between me and the 
women whom I had for mistresses, smiling with an ironic 
air and deriding their human beauty with all the perfec- 
tion of its own which was divine. It caused me to find 
ugliness in women who really were charming and capable 
of giving happiness to any one who had not become 
enamored of this adorable shadow whose body I did not 
think existed and which was only the presentiment of 
your own beauty. O Rosalind ! how unhappy have I 
been on your account, before I knew you ! O Theodore? 
how unhappy I have been on your account, after I knew 
you? If you will, you can open up to me the paradise of 
my dreams. You are standing on the threshold like a 
guardian angel wrapped in his wings, and you hold the 
golden key in your beautiful hands. Say, Rosalind, say, 
will you ^ 

“ I wait for but a word from you to live or to die — will 
you pronounce it ? 

“Are you Apollo driven from heaven, or the fair 
Aphrodite coming forth from the bosom of the sea? 
where have you left your chariot of gems yoked with its 
four flaming steeds? what have you done with your 
nacreous couch and your azure-tailed dolphins? what 
amorous nymph has blended her body with yours in 
the midst of a kiss ? O handsome youth, more charming 
than Cyparissus and Adonis, more adorable than all 
women ? 

“But you are a woman, and we are no longer in the 
days of metamorphoses; Adonis and Hermaphrodite are 
dead, and such a degree of beauty can no longer be at- 
tained by man — for, since heroes and gods have ceased 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


355 


to be, you alone preserve in your marble bodies, as in a 
Grecian temple, the precious gift of form anathemized 
by Christ, and show that the earth has no cause to envy 
heaven; you worthily represent the first divinity of the 
world, the purest symbolization of the eternal essence — 
beauty. 

As soon as I saw you something was rent within me, 
a veil fell, a door was opened, I felt myself inwardly 
flooded by waves of light; I understood that my life was 
before me, and that I had at last arrived at the decisive 
crossway. The dark and hidden portions of the half 
radiant figure which I was seeking to separate from the 
shadow was suddenly illuminated ; the browner tints 
drowning the background of the picture were soft-lighted; 
a tender roseate gleam crept over the greenish ultra- 
marine of the distance; the trees which had formed only 
confused silhouettes began to be more clearly defined; 
the dew-laden flowers dotted with brilliant specks the 
dull verdure of the turf. I saw the bull-finch with his 
scarlet breast at the end of an elder bough, the little 
white, pink-eyed, straight-eared rabbit putting out his 
head between two sprays of wild thyme and passing his 
paw across his nose, and the fearful stag coming to 
drink at the spring and admire his antlers in the water. 

‘‘From the morning when the sun of love rose upon 
my life everything has been changed ; there, where in 
the shadow used to wander ill-defined forms rendered 
terrible or monstrous by their uncertainty, groups of 
flowering trees show themselves with elegance, hills 
curve in graceful amphitheatres, and silver palaces, their 
terraces laden with vases and statues, bathe their feet in 
azure lakes and seem to float between two skies; what in 
the darkness I took for a gigantic dragon having wings 
armed with claws and crawling over the night with its 


356 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


scaly feet, is nothing but a felucca with silken sail, and 
painted and gilded oars, filled with women and musi- 
cians, and that frightful crab which methought was shak- 
ing its fangs and claws above my head, is nothing but a 
fan-palm whose long and narrow leaves were stirred by 
the nocturnal breeze. My chimeras and my errors have 
vanished — I love. 

Despairing of ever finding you I accused my dream 
of a lie and quarrelled furiously with Fate. I told 
myself that I was altogether mad to seek for such a 
type, or that nature was very barren and the Creator 
very unskillful to be unable to realize the simple idea 
of my heart. Prometheus had the noble pride to de- 
sire to make a man and rival God; I had created a 
woman, and I believed that, as a punishment for my 
audacity, a never-satisfied desire would gnaw my liver 
like a second vulture ; I was expecting to be chained 
with diamond fetters on a hoary rock at the edge of the 
savage ocean — but the fair marine nymphs with their 
long green hair, raising their white pointed breasts above 
the waves, and displaying to the sun their nacreous 
bodies all streaming with the tears of the sea, would not 
have come and leaned their elbows on the shore to con- 
verse with me and console me in my pain as in the play 
of old ^schylus. 

‘‘There has been nothing of all this. 

“You came, and I had reason to reproach my imagi- 
nation with its impotence. My torment was not what I 
dreaded, to be the perpetual prey of an idea on a sterile 
rock; but I suffered none the less. I had seen that you 
did in fact exist, that my presentiments had not been 
false to me on this point; but you manifested yourself to 
me with the ambiguous and terrible beauty of the sphinx. 
Like the mysterious goddess, Isis, you were wrapped in 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUL IN 


357 


a veil which I dared not raise lest I should be stricken 
dead. 

If you knew with what panting and restless heed, 
beneath my apparent inattention, I watched you and 
followed you even in your slightest movement! Nothing 
escaped me; how eagerly I gazed upon the little flesh 
that appeared at your neck or wrist in my endeavor to 
determine your sex! your hands have been the subject of 
profound studies by me, and I am able to say that I 
know their smallest curves, their most imperceptible 
veins, and their slightest dimple ; though you were to 
conceal yourself from head to foot in the most impene- 
trable domino, I should recognize you on seeing merely 
one of your fingers. I analyzed the undulations in your 
walk, the manner in which you placed your feet, and 
dressed your hair; I sought to discover your secret in 
the habits of your body. I especially watched you in 
those hours of indolence when the bones seem to be 
withdrawn from the body and the limbs sink and bend as 
though they had lost their stiffness, to see whether the 
feminine line would be more boldly pronounced amid 
this forgetfulness and carelessness. Never was anyone 
eyed so eagerly as you. 

‘‘For whole hours I would forget myself in this con- 
templation. Apart in some corner of the drawing-room, 
with a book in my hand which I was not reading, or 
crouched behind the curtain in my room, when you were 
in yours and your window-blinds were raised, then, 
penetrated with the marvelous beauty which is diffused 
about you like a luminous atmosphere, I would say to 
myself, ‘ Surely it is a woman ’ — then suddenly an ab- 
rupt bold movement, a manly accent or an off-hand 
manner would in a minute destroy my frail edifice of 


358 


MADEAIOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


probabilities and throw me back again into my former 
irresolution. 

would be voyaging with flowing sails over the 
limitless ocean of amorous dreaming, and you would 
come and ask me to fence or play tennis with you; the 
young girl, transformed into a young cavalier, would 
give me terrible blows and strike the foil from my hand 
as quickly and cleverly as the most experienced swash- 
buckler; at every moment of the day there was some 
such disappointment. 

would be about to approach you and say to you, 
* My dear fair one, ’tis you that I adore, ’ and I would 
see you bending down tenderly to a lady’s ear and 
breathing puffs of madrigals and compliments through 
her hair. Judge of my situation. Or, perhaps, some 
woman whom, in my strange jealousy, I could have 
flayed alive with all the voluptuousness in the world, 
would hang on your arm, and draw you aside to confide 
some puerile secrets to you, and would keep you for 
hours together in an embrasure of the window. 

‘‘I was maddened to see women talking to you, for it 
made me believe that you were a man, and, had you 
been so, it would have cost me extreme pain to endure 
it. When men came up in a free and familiar fashion, I 
was still more jealous, because then I thought that you 
were a woman and that they had a suspicion of it like 
myself; I was a prey to the most contrary passions and 
did not know what conclusion to arrive at. 

‘‘I was angry with myself and addressed the 
harshest reproaches to myself for being thus tormented 
by such a love and for not having the strength to uproot 
from my heart the venomous plant which had 
sprung up there in a night like a poisonous toad-stool; I 
cursed you, I called you my evil genius, I even believed 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


359 


for a moment that you were Beelzebub in person, for I 
could not explain the sensation which I experienced in 
your presence. 

When I was quite persuaded that you were in fact 
nothing else but a woman in disguise, the improbability 
of the motives with which I sought to justify such a ca- 
price plunged me again into my uncertainty, and I be- 
gan again to lament that the form which I had dreamed 
of for the love of my soul belonged to one of the same 
sex as myself — I accused chance which had clothed a man 
with such charming appearance, and, to my everlasting 
misfortune, had caused me to meet with him just when I 
had lost the hope of seeing realized the absolute idea of 
pure beauty which I had cherished in my heart for so 
long. 

“Now, Rosalind, I have the profound certainty that 
you are the most beautiful of women; I have seen you in 
the costume of your sex, I have seen your pure and cor- 
rectly rounded shoulders and arms. The beginning of 
your bosom, of which your gorget gave a glimpse, could 
belong only to a young girl; neither the beautiful hunter 
Meleager, nor the effeminate Bacchus, with their dubious 
forms, ever had such sweetness of line or such delicacy 
of skin, even though they be both of Paros marble and 
polished by the kisses of twenty centuries. I am tor- 
mented no longer in this respeet. But this is not all; 
you are a woman, and my love is no longer reprehensible, 

I may give myself up to it without remorse and abandon 
myself to the billow which is bearing me towards you; 
great and umbridled as the passion that I feel may 
be, it is permitted and I may confess it; but you, Rosa- 
lind, for whom I was consumed in silence and who knew 
not the immensity of my love, you whom this tardy reve- 
latiQn will only, it may be, surprise, do you not hate me, 


360 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


do you love me, can you ever love me? I do not know, 
and I tremble, and am yet more unhappy than before. 

There are moments when it seems to me that you do 
not hate me; when we acted ‘ As you like it,’ you gave a 
peculiar accent to certain passages in your part which 
strengthened their meaning, and, in a measure, invited 
me to declare myself. I believed that I could see in your 
eyes and smile gracious promises of indulgence, and 
could feel your hand respond to the pressure of mine. 
If I was deceived, O God! it is a thing on which I dare 
not reflect. Encouraged by all this and impelled by my 
love, I have written to you, for the dress you wear is ill- 
suited to such avowals, and my words have a thousand 
times been stayed upon my lips; even though I had the 
idea and firm conviction that I was speaking to a woman, 
that manly costume would startle all my tender loving 
thoughts and hinder them from taking their flight to- 
wards you. 

I beseech you, Rosalind, if you do not yet love me, 
strive to love me who have loved you in spite of every- 
thing, and beneath the veil in which you wrap your- 
self, no doubt out of pity for us; do not devote the re- 
mainder of my life to the most frightful despair and the 
most gloomy discouragement; think that I have wor- 
shipped you ever since the first ray of thought shone into 
my head, that you were revealed to me beforehand, and 
that, when I was quite little, you appeared to me in my 
dreams with a crown of -dew-drops, two prismatic wings, 
and the little blue flower in your hand; that you are the 
end, the means, and* the meaning of my life; that with- 
out you I am but an empty shadow, and that, if you blow 
upon the flame that you have kindled, nothing will re- 
main within me but a pinch of dust finer and more impal- 
pable than that which besprinkles the very wings of 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 361 

death*. Rosalind, you who have so many recipes to cure 
the sickness of love, cure me, for I am very sick; play 
your part to the end, cast aside the dress of the hand- 
some page Ganymede, and stretch out your white hand 
to the younger son of the brave knight of Rosalind-des- 
Bois.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


was at my window engaged in looking at the stars 
which were blooming joyously in the gardens of the sky, 
and inhaling the perfume of the Marvel of Peru wafted 
to me by an expiring breeze. The wind from the open 
casement had extinguished my lamp, the last remaining 
light in the mansion. My thoughts were degenerating 
into vague dreaming, and a sort of somnolence was be- 
ginning to overtake me; nevertheless, whether owing to 
fascination by the charm of the night, or to carelessness 
and forgetfulness, I still remained leaning with my 
elbow on the stone balustrade. Rosette, no longer see- 
ing the light of my lamp and being unable to distinguish 
me owing to a great corner of shadow which fell just 
across the window, had no doubt concluded that I was 
in bed, and it was for this that she was waiting in order 
to risk a last desparate attempt. She pushed open the 
door so softly that I did not hear her enter, and was 
within two steps of me before I had perceived her. She 
was very much astonished to see me still up; but, soon 
recovering from her surprise, she came up to me and 
took hold of my arm calling me twice by my name: 
‘Theodore, Theodore! ’ 

‘‘^What! you. Rosette, here, at this hour, quite 
alone, without a light? ’ 


383 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 363 


Is that a reproach, Theodore, that 3‘oii are making 
against me ? or is it only a simple, purely exclamatory 
phrase ? Yes, I, Rosette, the fine lady here, in your 
very room and not in my own where 1 ought to be, at 
eleven or perhaps twelve o’clock at night, with neither 
duenna, chaperon, nor maid — that is very astonishing, 
is it not ? I am surprised at it as you are, and scarcely 
know what explanation to give you. 

As she said this she passed one of her arms around 
his neck. 

^Rosette,’ I said, endeavoring to disengage my- 
self. ‘ I am going to try to light the lamp again; there is 
nothing more melancholy than darkness in a room; and 
then, when you are here, it is really a sin not to see 
clearly and so lose the sight of your charms. Allow me 
by a piece of tinder and a match, to make myself a lit- 
tle portable sun to throw into relief all that the jealous 
night is effacing beneath its shades. ’ 

^ It’s not worth while; I would as soon you did not 
see my blushes; I can feel my cheeks burning all over, 
for it is enough to make me die of shame. ’ She hid her 
face upon my breast, and for some minutes remained thus 
as if suffocated by her emotion. 

<^As for myself, during this interval, I passed my 
fingers mechanically through the long ringlets of her 
disordered hair, and searched my brain for some honor- 
able evasion to relieve me of my embarrassment. I 
could find none, however, for I had been driven into my» 
last entrenchment, and Rosette appeared perfectly' de- 
termined not to leave the room as she had entered it. 
Her attire was of a formidable easy nature, which did not 
promise well. I myself was wearing an open dressing- 
gown which would have been a poor protection for my 


3^4 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


incognito, so that I was extremely anxious about the re- 
sult of the battle. 

‘‘‘Theodore, listen to me,’ said Rosette, throwing 
back her hair from both sides of her face, as far as I 
could see by the feeble light which the stars and a very 
slender crescent of the rising moon shed into the room 
through the still open window — ‘ the step which I am 
taking is a strange one; — everyone would blame me for 
having taken it. But you are leaving soon and I love 
you ! I cannot let you go in this way without coming 
to an explanation with you. Perhaps you will never re- 
turn; perhaps it is the first and last time that I am to 
see you. Who knows where you will go ? But wher- 
ever you go you will carry away my soul and my life 
with you. If you had remained I should not have been 
reduced to this extremity. The happiness of looking 
at you, of listening to you, of living by your side would 
have been sufficient for me — I would not have asked for 
anything more. I would have shut up my love within 
my heart; you would have thought that you had in me 
only a good and sincere friend; but that cannot be. You 
say that it is absolutely necessary that you should leave. 

‘ It annoys you, Theodore, to see me clinging thus to 
your footsteps like a loving shadow which cannot but 
follow you; it must displease you always to find behind 
you beseeching eyes and hands stretched forth to seize 
the edge of your cloak. I know it, but I cannot prevent 
myself from acting thus. Besides, you cannot complain; 
it is your fault. I was calm, tranquil, almost haypy be- 
fore knowing you. You arrived handsome, young, 
smiling, like Phoebus the charming god. You paid me 
the most assiduous and delicate attentions; never was 
cavalier more sprightly and gallant. Your lips every 
moment let fall roses and rubies — everything served you 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 365 


as an opportunity for a madrigal, and you know how to 
turn the most insignificant phrases so as to convert them 
into adorable compliments. 

^ A woman who had hated you mortally at first would 
have ended by loving you, and I, I loved you from the 
very moment when first I saw you. Why do you ap- 
pear so surprised, then after being so lovable and so well 
loved? Is it not quite a natural consequence? I am 
neither mad, nor thoughtless, nor yet a romantic girl 
who becomes enamored of the first sword that she sees. 
I am well-bred, and I know what life is. What I am 
doing, every woman^^ even the most virtuous or most 
prudish, would equally have done. What was your idea 
and your intentions ? to please me, I imagine, for I can 
suppose no other. How is it, then, that you look sorry, 
in a measure, for having succeeded so well ? Have I 
without knowing it, done anything to displease you? 
I ask your pardon for it. Have you ceased to think me 
beautiful, or have you discovered some defect in me 
which repels you ? 

‘‘^You have the right of being hard to please in 
beauty, but either you have strangely lied to me, or else 
I am too beautiful ! I am as young as you, and I love 
you; why do you now disdain me? You used to be so 
eager about me, you supported my arm with such con- 
stant solicitude, you pressed the hand I surrendered to 
you so tenderly, you raised such languorous eyes towards 
me; if you did not love me, what was the use of all this 
intrigue? Could you perchance have had the cruelty to 
kindle love in a heart in order to have afterwards a sub- 
ject for mirth? Ah! that would be horrible mockery, 
impiety, sacrilege ! such could be the amusement only 
of a frightful soul, and I cannot believe it of you, quite 
inexplicable as is your behavior towards me. 


366 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


‘‘‘What then, is the cause of this sudden change? 
For my part, I can see none. What mystery is con- 
cealed behind such coldness? I cannot believe that you 
have a repugnance to me; your conduct proves the con- 
trary, for no one woos a woman he dislikes with such 
eagerness were he the greatest impostor on earth. O, 
Theodore, what have you against me? who has changed 
you thus? what have I done to you ? If the love which 
you appeared to have for me has taken its flight, mine, 
alas! has remained, and I cannot uproot it from my 
heart. Have pity on me, Theodore, for I am very un- 
happy. At least pretend to love me a little, and say 
some gentle words to me; it will not cost you much, un- 
less you have an insurmountable horror of me. ’ 

“ At this pathetic portion of her discourse, her sobs 
completely stifled her voice; she crossed both her hands 
upon my shoulder and laid her forehead upon them in 
quite a broken-hearted attitude. All that she said was 
perfectly correct, and I had no good reply to make. I 
could not assume a bantering tone. It would not have 
been suitable. Rosette was not one of those creatures 
who could be treated so lightly. I was, moreover, too 
much affected to be able to do it. I felt myself guilty 
for having trifled in such a manner with the heart of a 
charming woman, and I experienced the keenest and 
sincerest remorse in the world. 

“Seeing that I made no reply, the dear child heaved 
a long sigh and made a movement as though to raise 
her head, but she fell back again, weighed down by her 
emotion ; then she encircled me in her arms, the fresh- 
ness of which penetrated my doublet, laid her face upon 
mine, and began to weep silently. 

“ It had a singular effect upon me to feel this exhaust- 
less flow of tears, which did not come from my own 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 367 


eyes, streaming in this way down my cheek. It was not 
long before they were mingled with mine, and there was 
a veritable bitter rain sufficient to cause a new deluge 
had it only lasted forty days. 

At that moment the moon happened to shine straight 
upon the window; a pale ray dipped into the the room 
and illuminated our taciturn group with a bluish light. 

With her white wrapper, her bare arms,' of nearly 
the same color as her linen, her dishevelled hair and her 
mournful look. Rosette had the appearance of an alabas- 
ter figure of Melancholy seated on a tomb. As to my- 
self I scarcely know what appearance I had since I could 
not see myself, and there was no glass to reflect my 
image, but I think that I might very well have posed for 
a statue of Uncertainty personified. 

was moved, and bestowed a few more tender 
caresses than usual upon Rosette; from her hair my 
hand had descended to her velvety neck, and thence to 
her smooth round shoulder, which I gently stroked, 
following its quivering line. The child vibrated beneath 
my touch like a keyboard beneath a musician’s fingers. 

I myself felt a vague and confused species of desire, 
whose aim I could not discern. From the extreme out- 
line of her cheek which I touched with an almost insen- 
sible kiss, I reached her half-parted lips, and we re- 
mained like this for some time. I do not know, though 
whether it was two • minutes, or a quarter of an 
hour, or an hour; for I had totally lost the motion of 
time, and I did not know whether I was in heaven or on 
earth, here or elsewhere, living or dead. The heady 
wine of voluptuousness had so intoxicated me at the 
first mouthful that I had drunk, that any reason I pos- 
sessed had left me. 

Rosette clasped me more and more tightly in her 


368 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


arms, leaned convulsively upon me. And at every kiss 
her life seemed to rush wholly to the spot that was 
touched, and desert the rest of her person. Strange 
ideas passed through my head; had I not dreaded the 
betrayal of my incognito, I should have given play to 
Rosette’s impassioned bursts, and should, perhaps, have 
made some vain and mad attempt to impart a semblance 
of reality to the shadow of pleasure so ardently embraced 
by my fair mistress; I had not yet had a lover; and these 
reiterated caressess, and these sweet names lost in kisses, 
agitated me to the highest degree, although they were 
those of a woman — and then the nocturnal visit, the ro- 
mantic passion, the moonlight, all had a freshness and 
novel charm for me which made me forget that after all 
I was not a man. 

“Nevertheless, making a great effort over myself, I 
told Rosette that she was compromising herself horribly 
by coming into my room at such an hour and remaining 
in it so long, and that her women might notice her ab- 
sence and see that she had not passed the night in her 
own apartment. 

“ Rosette made no reply. 

“She believed, poor child, that the happy hour which 
had been so laboriously contrived, was at last about to 
strike for her; but it only struck two in the morning. 
My situation was as critical as it could be, when the door 
turned on its hinges aud gave passage to the very Chev- 
alier Alcibiades in person; he held a candlestick in one 
hand and his sword in the other 
/“ He came into the room holding the light to the face 
of the confused Rosette, said to her in a jeering tone — 
‘Good morning, sister.’ Little Rosette was unable to 
find a word in reply. 

“ ‘ So it appears, my aearest and most virtuous sister, 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 369 


that having in your wisdom judged that Seigneur Theo- 
dore’s room was better than your own, you have come to 
share it ? or perhaps it is on account of the ghosts in your 
room, and you thought that you would be in greater 
safety in this one under the protection of the said seig- 
neur ? ’Tis very well advised. Ah! Chevalier de S^ran- 
nes, so you have cast your amorous glance upon my 
sister, and you think that it will end there. I fancy that 
it would not be unwholesome to have a Itttle cutting of 
each other’s throats, and if you will be so kind I shall be 
infinitely obliged to you. Theodore, you have abused 
the friendship that 1 had for you, and you make me re- 
pent of the good opinion which at the first I had formed 
of the integrity of your character; it is bad, very bad.’ 

‘‘ I could not offer any valid defense; appearances were 
against me. Who would have believed me if I had said, 
as was indeed the case, that Rosette had come into my 
room in spite of me, and that, far from seeking to please 
her, I was doing everything in my power to estrange her 
from me ? I had only one thing to say, and I said it— 
‘ Seigneur Alcibiades, there shall be as much throat- 
cutting as you like.’ 

During this colloquy. Rosette had not failed to faint 
according to the soundest rules of the pathetic — I went 
to a cryatal cup full of water in which the stem of a large 
white, half-leafless rose was immersed, and threw a few 
drops over her face, which promptly brought her round 
again. 

Scarcely knowing what face to put on the matter, 
she crouched down at the bedside and buried her pretty 
head beneath the clothes, like a bird settling itself to 
sleep. She had so gathered the sheets and pillows 
about her that it would have been very difficult to make 
out what there was beneath the heap — only by a few 

Maupin--23 


370 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


soft sighs issuing from time to time could it have been 
guessed that it was a young repentant sinner, or at least 
one extremely sorry at being a sinner in intention only 
and not in deed — which was the case with the unfortun- 
ate Rosette. 

“The brother, having no further anxiety about his 
sister, resumed the dialogue, and said in a somewhat 
gentler tone: ‘ It is not absolutely indispensable to cut 
each other’s throats at once, that is an extreme measure 
which may be resorted to at any time. Listen. We are 
not equally matched. You are in early youth and much 
less vigorous than I, if we were to fight I should cer- 
tainly kill you or maim you — and I should not like either 
to kill or disfigure you — which would be a pity; Rosette, 
who is over there, and does not utter a word, would bear 
me ill will for it all her life ; for she is as spiteful and 
wicked as a tigress when she sets about it, the dear little 
dove. You don’t know this, you who are her Prince 
Galaor, and who receive only charming kindnesses from 
her; but it is no slight matter. Rosette is free and so 
are you ; it appears that you are not irreconcilable 
enemies; her widowhood is about to end, and things 
could not be better. Marry her; she will have no need 
to return to her own room, while I shall in this way be 
freed from the necessity of taking you as a sheath for 
my sword, which would not be agreeable either for you 
or for me — what do you think? ’ 

“I had every reason for making a horrible grimace, 
for his proposal was of all things in the world the most 
impracticable for me; I could sooner have walked on all 
fours on the ceiling, like the flies, or taken down the sun 
without having a stool to stand on, than do what he 
asked of me, and yet the last proposition was unquest- 
ionably more agreeable than the first. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


371 


He appeared surprised that I did not accept with 
ecstasy, and he repeated what he had said as if to give 
me time to reply. 

‘‘ ‘ An alliance with you would be a most honorable 
one for me, and I should never have dared to pretend to 
it; I know that it would be an unprecedented piece of 
good fortune for a youth, who, as yet, has neither rank 
nor standing in the world, and one that the most illus- 
trious would esteem themselves fortunate to obtain — 
but yet I can only persist in my refusal, and, since I am 
free to choose between a duel and marriage, I prefer the 
duel. ’Tis a singular taste — and few people would have 
it — but it is mine. ’ 

“Here Rosette gave the most mournful sob in the 
world, put forth her head from beneath the pillow, and 
seeing my impassible and determined countenance put 
it in again like a snail whose horns have been struck. 

“ ‘ It is not that I have no love for Madame Rosette, 
I love her infinitely; but I have reasons for not marrying 
which you would yourself consider excellent if it were 
possible for me to tell them to you. Moreover things 
have not gone so far as appearances might lead one to 
believe; except a few kisses which a lively friendship is 
sufficient to explain and to justify, nothing has passed 
between us that may not be acknowledged, and your 
sister’s virtue is assuredly the most intact and blameless 
in the world. I owed her this testimony. Now, Seig- 
neur Alcibiades at what time do we fight and where ? ’ 

“I^ere, at once,’ cried Alcibiades, intoxicated with 
rage. 

“ ‘Can you think of it? before Rosette! ’ 

“ ‘Draw, villain, or I shall assassinate you, ’ he con- 
tinued, brandishing his sword and whirling it around 
his head. 


372 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


‘ Let us leave the room. ’ 

^ If you do not put yourself on guard I will pin 5^ou 
to the wall like a bat, my fine Celadon, and though you 
may flap your wings to eternity, you will not get free, I 
give you warning, ’ and he rushed upon me with his 
weapon raised. 

I drew my rapier — for he would have done as he had 
said — and at first contented myself with parrying his 
thrusts. 

‘‘Rosette made a superhuman effort to come and 
throw herself between our swords, for both combatants 
were equally dear to her; but her strength deserted her, 
and she rolled senseless on to the foot of the bed. 

“Our blades gleamed and made a noise like that of an 
anvil, for want of space obliged us to engage our swords 
very closely. 

“Two or three times Alcibiades nearly reached me, 
and had I not been an excellent master of fence my life 
would have been in the greatest danger; for his skill was 
astonishing and his strength prodigious. He exhausted 
all the tricks and feints in fencing to touch me. Enraged 
at his want of success, he exposed himself twice or thrice; 
I would not take advantage of it; but he returned to the 
attack with such desperate and savage fury, that I was 
forced to seize upon the opening that he gave me; more- 
over the noise and whirling flashes of the steel intoxi- 
cated and dazzled me. I did not think of death and had 
not the least fear; the keen and mortal point which came 
before my eyes every second had no more effect upon me 
than if I were fighting with buttoned foils; only I was 
indignant at Alcibiades’ brutality and my indignation was 
still further heightened by the consciousness of my per- 
fect innocence. I wished merely to prick him in the arm 
or shoulder and so make him drop his sword, for I had 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 


373 


vainly tried to disarm him. He had a wrist of iron, and’ 
the devil could not have made him move it. 

At last he made a thrust so quick and long that I 
could only partially parry it; my sleeve was pierced and I 
feljt the chill of iron on my arm; but I was not wounded. 
At sight of this I became angry, and instead of defend- 
ing myself attacked in turn — I forgot he was Rosette’s 
brother and I fell upon him as though he were my mor- 
tal enemy. Taking advantage of a mistake in the posi- 
tion of his sword I made so firm a flanconnade that I 
reached his side, and with an ‘Oh!’ he fell backwards. 

“I thought that he was dead but he was really only 
wounded, and his fall was occasioned by a false step that 
he had made while trying to defend himself. I cannot 
express, Graciosa, the sensation that I experienced; cer- 
tainly, it is not difficult to make the reflection that if you 
strike flesh with a fine, sharp point, a hole will be pierced 
and blood will gush out. Nevertheless I was profoundly 
stupefied on perceiving red streams trickling over Alci- 
biade’s doublet. I of course had not thought sawdust 
would come out as from a burst doll; but I knew that 
never in my life did I experience such great surprise, and 
it seemed to me that some unheard of thing had just 
happened to me. 

“The unheard-of thing was not, as it appeared to me, 
that blood should flow from a wound, but that the wound 
should have been given by me, and that a young girl of 
my age (I was just going to write ‘a young man, ’ so well 
have I entered into the spirit of my part) should have laid 
low a vigorous captain so well trained in the art of fence 
as Alcibir.des — and all this, what is more, for the crime 
of refusing to marry a very rich and charming woman! 

“ I was truly in a cruel embarassment, with the sister 
in a swoon, the brother, as I believed, dead, and myself 


374 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


nearly swooning or dead like one or the other of them. 
I hung to the bell-rope, chimed loud enough to wake the 
dead, and, leaving the task of explaining matters to the 
servants and the old aunt to be performed by the fainting 
Rosette and the embowelled Alcibiades, went straight to 
the stable. The air restored me at once; I took out my 
horse, and saddled and bridled him myself; I ascertained 
that the crupper was properly fastened and the curb in a 
right condition; I made the stirrups of equal length, drew 
the girth a notch tighter — in a word, I harnessed him 
with an attention that was at least singular at such a mo- 
ment, and with a calmness quite inconceivable after a 
combat terminated in such a way. 

mounted my beast and crossed the park by a path 
that I knew. The branches of the trees all laden with 
dew, lashed my face and wetted it — you would have 
thought that the old trees were stretching out their arms 
to stop me and keep me for the love of their mistress. 
Had I been in a different mood, or at all superstitious, I 
might have believed that they were so many phantoms 
who wished to seize me and were showing me their fists. 

<^But in reality I had not a single idea either of that 
kind or of any other; a leaden stupor, so great that I was 
scarcely conscious of it, weighed upon my brain like too 
tight a helmet, only it did seem to me that I had killed 
some one yonder and that it was for this that I was going 
away. I was, moreover, horribly inclined to sleep, 
whether owing to the lateness of the hour or to the fact 
that the emotion of the evening had had a physical re- 
action and had corporally fatigued me. 

reached a little postern which opened upon the 
fields in a secret way which Rosette had shown me in our 
walks. I dismounted, touched the knob and pushed 
open the door; I regained my saddle after leading my 








MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


375 


horse through, and put him to the gallop until I reached 

the highroad to C , at which place I arrived at early 

dawn. 

‘^Such is the very faithful and circumstantial history 
of my first intrigue and my first duel. 


CHAPTER XV 


“ It was five o’clock in the morning when I entered the 
town. The houses were beginning to look out of win- 
dow; the worthy natives showing their benign counte- 
nances surmounted by colossal night-caps behind the 
panes. At the sound of my horse’s iron-shod hoofs 
ringing upon the uneven flinty pavement there would 
emerge from every dormer window the big curiously red 
countenances and the matutinally uncovered breasts 
of the local Venuses who lost themselves in conjectures 
about the unwonted appearance of a traveller at 

C , at such an hour and in such an equipment, for my 

attire was on a very small scale, and my appearance was, 
at the least, suspicious. 

I got a little rascal, who had his hair over his eyes, . 
and lifted up his spaniel’s muzzle in the air that he might 
consider me more comfortably to point me out an inn; I 
gave a few coppers for his trouble, and a conscientious 
cut with my riding-whip, which made him flee away 
screaming like a jay that had been plucked alive. I 
threw myself upon a bed and fell fast asleep. When 1 
awoke it was three o’clock in the afternoon — a length of 
time scarcely sufficient to rest me completely. In fact it 
was not too much for a sleepless night, an intrigue, a duel, 
and a very rapid though quite victorious flight. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


377 


I was very anxious about the wound that I had given 
Alcibiades; but some days afterwards I was completely 
reassured, for I learnt it that had not been attended by 
dangerous consequences, and that he was quite convales- 
cent. This relieved me of a singular weight, for the idea 
of having killed a man tormented me strangely although 
it had been in lawful self-defense, and against my own 
wish. I had not yet arrived at that sublime indifference 
towards men’s lives to which I afterwards attained. 

‘‘At C 1 again came across several of the young 

fellows with whom we had travelled. This pleased me; 
I formed a closer connection with them, and they in- 
troduced me into several agreeable houses. I had be- 
come completely used to my dress, and the ruder and 
more active life that I had led, and the violent exercises 
to which I had devoted myself, had made me twice as 
robust as I had been before. I followed these mad- 
caps everywhere; I rode, hunted, had orgies with them, 
for little by little I had come to drink; without attaining 
to the perfectly German capacity of some among them, 
I could empty two or three bottles for my share without 
getting very tipsy, which was very satisfactory progress. 
I made verses like a god with extreme copiousness, and 
kissed inn-servants with sufficient boldness. 

“In short, I was an accomplished young cavalier in 
complete comformity with the last fashionable pattern. I 
got rid of certain 'countrified notions that I had had 
about virtue and other similar tarradiddles; on the other 
hands, I became so prodigiously delicate in point of 
honor that I fought a duel nearly every day it even became 
a necessity with me to do so, a sort of indispensable ex- 
ercise without which I should have felt out of sorts the 
whole day. Accordingly, when no one had looked at me 
or trodden on my foot and I had no motive for fighting, 


37S 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


rather than remain idle and not exercise myself in fenc- 
ing, I would act as second to my comrades or even to 
men whom I knew only by name. 

‘‘I had soon a colossal renown for bravery, and noth- 
ing short of it was necessary to check the pleasantries 
which would infallibly have been suggested by my 
beardless face and effeminate appearance. But two or 
three superfluous button-holes that I had opened in 
some doublets, and a few slices that I very delicately 
cut from some recalcitrant skins, caused my appearance 
to be generally considered more manly than that of 
Mars in person or of Priapus himself, and you might 
have met with people who would have sworn that they 
had held children of mine over the baptismal font. 

Through all this apparent dissipation, amid this 
riotous, extravagant life, I ceased not to pursue my 
original idea, that is to say the conscientious study of 
man and the solution of the great problem of a perfect 
lover, a problem somewhat more difficult to solve than 
that of the philosopher’s stone. 

<< Certain ideas are like the horizon which most cer- 
tainly exists since you see it in front of you in whatever 
direction you turn, but which flees obstinately before 
you, and, whether you go at a foot pace or at a gallop, 
keeps always at the same distance from you; for it can- 
not manifest itself except with a determined condition of 
remoteness; it is destroyed in proportion as you advance, 
to be formed further away with its fleeting imperceptible 
azure, and it is in vain that you try to detain it by the 
hem of its flowing mantle. 

The further I progressed in my knowledge of the ani- 
mal the more I saw how utterly impossible was the real- 
ization of my desire, and how completely external to the 
conditions of its nature was that which I found indispen- 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


379 


sable to an auspicious love. I convinced myself that 
the man who would be the most sincerely in love with 
me would with the greatest readiness in the world find 
means to make me the most wretched of women, and 
yet I had already abandoned many of my girlish require- 
ments. I had come down from the sublime clouds, not 
altogether into the street and the kennel, but upon a hill 
of medium height, accessible though somewhat steep. 

^‘The ascent, it is true, was rude enough; but I was 
so proud as to believe that I was quite worth the trouble 
of the effort, and that I should be a sufficient compensa- 
tion for the pains that had been taken. I could never 
have prevailed upon myself to take a step forward; I 
waited, perched patiently upon my summit. 

^^My plan was as follows: In my male attire I should 
have made the acquaintance of some young man whose 
exterior pleased me; I should have lived on familiar 
terms with him; by means of skillful questions and false 
confidences which would have challenged true ones, I 
should soon have acquired a complete knowledge of his 
feelings and thoughts; and, if I found him such a one 
as I wished him to be, I should have alleged some jour- 
ney, and kept away from him for three or four months to 
give him time to forget my features; then I should have 
returned in my woman’s costume, and arranged a volup- 
tuous little house, buried amid trees and flowers, in a 
retired suburb;then I should have so ordered matters that 
he would have met me and wooed me; and, if he showed 
a true and faithful love, I should have given myself to 
him without restriction or precaution — the title of his 
mistress would have appeared honorable to me, and I 
should not have asked him for any other. 

“But assuredly this plan will never be put into execu- 
tion, for it is characteristic of plans never to be executed, 


380 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


wherein principally appear the frailty of the will and the 
mere nothingness of man. The proverb ^ God wills what 
woman wills ’ has no more truth in it than any other 
proverb, that is to say, it has hardly any at all. 

“ So long as I had seen men only at a distance and 
through the medium of my desire, they had appeared 
comely to me, and my sight had deceived me. Now I 
consider them frightful in the highest degree. 

“ How coarse and ignoble are their lineaments, and 
how devoid of delicacy and elegance! what unfinished 
and unpleasing lines! what hard, dark, and furrowed 
skin! Some are as swarthy as men that had been hanged 
for six months, emaciated, bony, hairy, with violin-strings 
on their hands, large drawbridge feet, dirty mustaches 
always full of food and twirled back to the ears, hair as 
rough as a broom’s bristles, chins ending like boars’ 
heads, lips cracked and dried by strong liquors, eyes sur- 
rounded by three or four dark orbs, necks full of twisted 
veins, big muscles and prominent cartilages. Others are 
stuffed with red meat, and push on before them a belly 
that their waist belt can scarcely span; they blink as they 
open their little sea-green eyes inflamed with luxury, and 
resemble hippopotamuses in breeches rather than human 
creatures. They always smell either of wine, or brandy, 
or tobacco, or else of their own natural odor, which is the 
very worst of all. As to those whose forms are some- 
what less disgusting, they are like misshapen women. 
And that is all. 

I had not remarked all this. I had been in life as in 
a cloud, and my feet scarcely touched the earth. The 
odor of the roses and lilacs of spring went to my head 
like too strong a perfume. I dreamt only of accomplished 
heroes, faithful and respectful lovers, flames worthy of 
the altar, marvellous devotions and sacrifices, and I should 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 381 


have thought that I had found them all in the first black- 
guard that bade me good day. Yet this first, coarse in- 
toxication had no long duration; strange suspicions seized 
me, and I could have no rest until I had cleared them up. 

‘‘At first my horror of men was pushed to the last de- 
gree of exaggeration, and I looked upon them as dread- 
ful monstrosities. Their modes of thought, their man- 
ners and their carelessly cynical language, their brutality 
and their scorn of women shocked and revolted me ex- 
tremely, so little did the idea that I had formed of them 
correspond with the reality. They are not monsters, if 
you will, but something, on my word, that is much worse! 
They are capital fellows of very jovial disposition, who 
eat and drink well, will do you all kinds of services, are 
good painters and musicians, and are suitable for a thous- 
and things, with, however, the single exception of that 
one for which they were created, namely, to be the male 
of the animal called woman, with which they have not 
the slightest affinity, physical or moral. 

“Originally, I could scarcely disguise the contempt 
with which they inspired me, but by degrees I became 
accustomed to their manner of life. I was as little an- 
noyed by the jests that they launched against women as 
if I had myself belonged to their own sex. On the con- 
trary, I made some very good ones, the success of which 
singularly flattered my pride; certainly none of my com- 
rades went so far as I did in the matter of sarcasm and 
pleasantries on this subject. My perfect knowledge of the 
ground gave me a great advantage, and, besides any piq- 
uant turn that they might have, my epigrams shone in vir- 
tue of an accuracy that was often wanting in theirs. For 
although all the evil that is said of women has always some 
foundation, it is nevertheless difficult for men to preserve 
the composure requisite in order to jest about them well, 


382 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPLN 


and there is often a good deal of love in their invectives. 

‘‘I remarked that it was those that were most tender 
and had most feeling about women who treated them 
worse than the rest, and who returned to the subject with 
quite a peculiar bitterness as though they owed them a 
mortal grudge for not being what they wished them to be, 
and for falsifying the good opinion they had first formed 
about them. 

“What I desired above all things was not physical 
beauty, it was beauty of the soul, love; but love, as I am 
sensible of it, is perhaps beyond human possibilities. 
And yet it seems to me that I should love in this way, 
and that I should give more than I require. 

“What magnificent madness! what sublime extrava- 
gance! 

“To surrender yourself entirely without any self- 
reservation, to renounce the possession of yourself and 
the freedom of your will, to place the latter in the hands 
of another, to see only with his eyes and hear only with 
his ears, to be but one in two bodies, to blend and 
mingle your souls so that you cannot tell whether you are 
yourself or the other, to absorb and radiate continually, 
to be now the moon and now the sun, to see the whole 
of the world and of creation in a single being, to dis- 
place the centre of life, to be ready, at any time, for the 
greatest sacrifices and the most absolute abnegation, to 
suffer in the bosom of the person loved as though it were 
your own; O wonder! to double yourself while giving 
yourself — such is love as \ conceive it. 

“Fidelity like that of the ivy, entwinings as of the 
young vine, and cooings as of the turtle-dove, these are 
matters of course, and are the first and simplest 
conditions. 

“ Had I remained at home, in the costume of my sex. 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 383 


turning my wheel with melancholy or making tapestry be- 
hind a pane in the embrasure of a window, what I have 
sought for through the world would perhaps have come 
and found me of itself. Love is like fortune and dislikes 
to be pursued. It visits by preference those that are 
sleeping on the edge of wells, and the kisses of queens 
and gods often descend upon closed eyes. It is a 
lure and a deception to think that all adventures and all 
happiness exist only in those places where you are not, 
and it is a miscalculation to have your horse saddled and 
to post off in quest of your ideal. Many people make, 
and many others will again make this mistake. The hori- 
zon is always of the most charming azure, although 
when you reach it the hills composing it are usually 
but poor, cracked clay, or ochre washed by the rain. 

<‘I had imagined that the world was full of adorable 
youths, and that populations of Esplandians, Amadises, 
and Lancelots of the Lake were to be met with on the 
roads in pursuit of their Dulcineas; and I was greatly 
astonished that the world took very little heed of this 
sublime search. I am well punished for my curiosity and 
distrust. I am surfeited in the most horrible manner 
possible without having enjoyed. With me knowledge 
has gone before use; nothing can be worse than such pre- 
mature experiences which are not the fruit of action. 

“The completest ignorance would be a thousand times 
better; it would at least make you do many foolish things 
which would serve to instruct you and to rectify your 
ideas; for, beneath the disgust of which I have been 
speaking, there is always a lively and rebellious element 
which produces the strangest disorders; the mind is van- 
quished, but the body is not, and will not subscribe to 
this superb disdain. The young and robust body strives 
and kicks beneath the mind like a vigorous stallion ridden 


384 MADEAIOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


by a feeble old man, whom, however, he is unable to 
throw, for the cavesson holds his head and the bit tears 
his mouth. ^ 

“Since I have lived with men, I have seen so many 
women basely betrayed, so many secret connections im- 
prudently divulged, the purest loves dragged carelessl}^ 
through the mire, young fellows hastening to frightful 
carousals on leaving the arms of the most charming 
mistresses, the most firmly established amours suddenly 
broken off without any plausible motive, that I now find 
it impossible to decide on taking a lover. It would be to 
throw oneself in broad daylight and with open eyes into 
a bottomless abyss. Nevertheless, the secret desire of 
my heart is still to have one. The voice of nature stifles 
the voice of reason. I am quite sensible that I shall never 
be happy if I cannot love and be loved — but the misfor- 
tune is that only a man can be had as a lover, and if men 
are not altogether devils, they are very far from being 
angels. It would be vain for them to stick feathers on 
their shoulder-blades, and put a glory of gilt paper on 
their heads; I know them too well to be deceived. All 
the fine things that they could whisper to me would be 
of no avail. I know beforehand what they are going to 
say, and could say it for them. 

“ I have seen them studying their parts and rehearsing 
them before going on in front; I know the chief of the 
tirades that they intend to be effective and the passages 
on which they rely. Neither paleness of face nor altera- 
tion of feature would convince me. I know that these 
prove nothing. A night of orgie, a few bottles of wine, 
and two or three girls, are sufficient to wrinkle your face 
most becomingly. I have seen this trick practiced by a 
young marquis, by nature very rosy and fresh-colored, 
who found himself all the better for it, and owed the 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPLN 385 


crowning of his passion only to this touching and well- 
gained paleness. I know also how the most langorous 
Celadons console themselves for the harshness of their 
Astraeas and find means for being patient while waiting 
for the happy hour. 

‘‘Truly, after this, man tempts me but little; for he 
does not possess beauty like woman, beauty, that splen- 
did garment which so well disguises the imperfections of 
the soul, that divine drapery cast by God over the naked- 
ness of the world, and which makes it in some measure 
excusable to love the vilest courtesan of the kennel if she 
owns this magnificent and royal gift. 

“In default of the virtues of the soul, I should at least 
wish for exquisite perfection of form, satinity of flesh, 
roundness of contour, sweetness of line, delicacy of skin, 
all that makes the charm of women. Since I cannot have 
love, I would have voluptuousness, and, well or ill, re- 
place the brother by the sister. But all the men that I 
have seen seem to me frightfully ugly. My horse is a 
hundred times more handsome, and I should have less 
repugnance to kissing him than to kissing sundry won- 
derful fellows who believe themselves very charming. 
Certainly a fop like those of my acquaintance would not 
be a brilliant theme for me to embellish with variations 
of pleasure. 

“A soldier would suit me nearly as little; military men 
have something mechanical in their walk and something 
bestial in their face which makes me look upon them as 
scarcely human creatures; gentlemen of the long robe 
are not more delightful to me, they are dirty, oily, shaggy, 
threadbare, with glaucous eyes and lipless mouths; they 
smell immoderately rancid and mouldy, and I should feel 
no inclination to lay my face against their lynx or badger- 
like muzzles. As to poets, they think of nothing in the 

Manpin— 24 


386 MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN' 


world but the endings of words and go no further back 
than to the penultimate, and, in truth, are difficult to 
make use of suitably; they are more wearisome than the 
others, but they are as ugly and have not the least dis- 
tinction or elegance in their figure and dress, which is 
truly singular. Men who are occupied the whole day 
with form and beauty do not perceive that their boots are 
badly made and their hats ridiculous! They look like 
country apothecaries or teachers of learned dogs out of 
work, and would give you a distaste for poetry and verse 
for several eternities. 

‘‘As for painters, their stupidity also is enormous; they 
see nothing except the seven colors. One with whom I 

had spent a few days at R , and who was asked what 

he thought of me, made this ingenious reply: ‘ He is 
rather warm in tone, and in the shadows pure Naples 
yellow should be employed instead of white, with a little 
Cassel ochre and reddish brown.’ Such was his opinion, 
and, moreover, his nose was crooked and his eyes like 
his nose; which did not improve his chances. Whom 
shall I take ? A soldier with bulging crop, a limb of the 
law with convex shoulders, a poet or painter with a wild 
look, a lean little coxcomb without consistence ? Which 
cage shall I choose in this menagerie ? I am quite un- 
able to sa}^ I feel as little inclination in one direction as 
in another, for they are as perfectly equal in point of 
foolishness and ugliness as they can possibly be. 

“Another alternative would still be open to me, which 
would be to take any one that I loved though he were a 
porter or a jockey; but I do not love even a porter. O 
unhappy heroine that I am! unmated turtle-dove con- 
demned eternally to utter elegiac cooings! 

“Oh! how many times have I wished to be really a 
man as I appear to be! How many women are there 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A VEIN 387 


with whom 1 should have had a fellow-feeling, and whose 
hearts would have understood mine! how perfectly happy 
should I have been rendered by those delicacies of love, 
those noble flights of pure passion to which I could have 
replied! What sweetness, what delight! how would all 
the sensitive plants of my soul have bloomed freely with- 
out being obliged every minute to contract and close 
beneath some coarse touch! What charming efflorescence 
of invisible flowers which will never open, and whose 
m.ysterious perfume would have tenderly embalmed the 
fraternal soul! It seems to me that it would have been 
an enchanting life, an infinite ecstasy with ever out- 
stretched wings; walks, with hands entwined never re- 
leasing their hold, beneath avenues of golden sand, 
through groves of eternally-smiling roses, in parks full of 
fish-ponds with gliding swans, and alabaster vases stand- 
ing out against the foliage. 

“Had I been a youth, how I should have loved Rosette! 
what worship it would have been! Our souls were truly 
made for each other, two pearls destined to blend together 
and make but one! How perfectly should I have real- 
ized the ideas that she had formed of love! Her charac- 
ter suits me completely, and her style of beauty pleases 
me. It is a pity that out love should be totally con- 
demned to indispensable platonism! 

“An adventure befell me lately. 

“ I used to visit a house in which there was a charm- 
ing little girl, fifteen years old at the very most; I have 
never seen a more adorable miniature. She was fair, 
but so delicately and transparently fair that ordinary 
blondes would, have appeared excessively brown and as 
dark as moles beside her; you would have thought that 
she had her golden hair powdered with silver; her eye- 
brows were of so mild and soft a tint that they were 


388 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


scarcely apparent to the sight; her pale blue eyes had 
the most velvety look and the most silky lashes imagin- 
able; her mouth, too small to put the tip of your finger 
into it, added still further to the childish and exquisite 
character of her beauty, and the gentle curves and 
dimples of her cheeks had an ingenuousness that was un- 
speakably charming. The whole of her dear little per- 
son delighted me beyond all expression; I loved her frail, 
white, little hands through which you could see the light, 
her bird-like foot which scarcely touched the ground, her 
figure which a breath would have broken, and her pearly 
shoulders, little developed as yet, which her scarf, placed 
awry, happily disclosed. 

‘‘Her prattle, in which artlessness imparted fresh 
piquancy to her natural wit, would engage me for. whole 
hours, and I took singular pleasure in m.aking her talk; 
she would utter a thousand delicious comicalities, now 
with extraordinary nicety of intention, and now without 
having apparently the slightest comprehension of their 
scope — which made them a thousand times more attrac- 
tive. I used to give her bon-bons and lozenges, kept ex- 
pressly for her in a light tortoise-shell box, which pleased 
her greatly, for she is dainty like the true little puss that 
she is. As soon as I arrived she would run up to me and 
try my pockets to see whether the blissful bon-bon box 
was there; I would make her run from one hand to the 
other, and this would occasion a little battle in which she 
in the end infallibly got the upper hand and completely 
plundered me. 

“One day, however, she contented herself with greet- 
ing me in a very grave manner, and did not come as 
usual to see whether the sweetmeat fountain was still 
flowing in my pocket; she remained haughtily on her 
chair, quite upright and with her elbows drawn back. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 389 


* Well ! Ninon,’ I said to her ^ have you become fond 
of saltmow, or are 3^ou afraid that sweets will make your 
teeth drop out ? ’ And as I spoke I tapped the box, 
which gave forth the most honeyed and sugary sound in 
the world from beneath my jacket. 

“ She put her little tongue half way out on the edge of 
her lips as though to taste the ideal sweetness of the 
absent bon-bon, but she did not stir. 

^‘Then I drew the box from my pocket, opened it, 
and began religiously to swallow the burnt almonds of 
which she was especially fond ; the greedy instinct was 
for a moment stronger than her resolution; she put out 
her hand to take some and drew it back again immedi- 
ately, saying, ‘ I am too big to eat sweets ! ’ And she 
heaved a sigh. 

^It did not strike me that you had grown very much 
since last week; you must be like the mushrooms which 
spring up in a night. Come and let me measure you. ’ 
Laugh as much as you like,’ she rejoined with a 
charming pout; ‘ I am no longer a little girl, and I want 
to grow very big. ’ 

^‘‘Your resolutions are excellent, and should be ad- 
hered to; but might it be known, my dear young lady, 
what has caused these lofty ideas to come into your 
head? For, a week ago, you 'appeared quite content to 
be small,' and* craiinched your burnt almonds without 
caring very much about compromising your dignity. 

<<The little creature looked at me in a singular manner, 
glanced around her, and, when she had quite satisfied 
herself that no one could hear us, leaned over me in a 
mysterious fashion and said : 

< I have a lover. ’ 

<< <The deuce! I am no longer surprised that you have 
ceased to care for lozenges; you were wrong, however, 


390 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


not to take some, for you might have had a doll’s dinner 
party with him, or exchanged them for a shuttlecock. ’ 
^‘The child made a scornful movement with her 
shoulders and appeared to look upon me with perfect 
contempt. As she continued to maintain her attitude of 
an offended queen, I continued. 

‘What is the name of this glorious personage? 
Arthur, I suppose, or else Henry. ’ These were two 
little boys with whom she used to play, and whom she 
called her husbands. 

“ ‘No, neither Arthur nor Henry, ’ she said, fixing her 
clear, transparent eyes upon me, ‘ a gentleman. ’ She 
raised her hand above her head to give me an idea of 
height. 

“‘As tall as that? Why, this is getting serious. 
And who is this tall lover ? ’ 

“‘Monsieur Theodore, I will tell you, but you must 
not speak about it to any one, neither to mamma, nor 
Polly (her governess), or your friends who think me a 
child and would make fun of me. ’ 

“ I promised the most inviolable secrecy, for I was 
very curious to know who the gallant personage was, and 
the child, seeing that I was making fun of the matter, 
hesitated to take me entirely into her confidence. 

“ Reassured by the word of honor that I gave her to be 
carefully silent about it, she left her easy-chair, came 
and leaned over the back of mine, and whispered the 
name of the beloved prince very softly in my ear. 

“ I was confounded; it was the Chevalier de G , a 

dirty, intractable animal, with the morals of a school- 
master and the physique of a drum-major, the most in- 
temperate debauchee of a man that could possibly be seen, 
a genuine satyr, minus the goat’s feet and the pointed ears. 
This inspired me with grave apprehensions for dear Ni- 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


391 


non, and I made up my mind to put the matter to rights. 

“Some people came in, and the conversation dropped. 

“I withdrew into a corner and searched my brain for 
the means of preventing things from going further, for it 
would have been quite a sin for so delicious a creature to 
fall to such an arrant scoundrel. 

“ The little one’s mother was a kind of courtesan who 
kept gaming tables and a literary salon. Bad verses were 
read at her house and good money lost, which was a com- 
pensation. She had not much love for her daughter, who 
was, to her, asortof living baptismal certificate which pre- 
vented her falsifying her chronology. Besides, the child 
was growing up, and her budding charms gave rise to 
comparisons which were not to the advantage of the 
prototype, already somewhat worn by the action of years 
and men. The child was accordingly rather neglected, 
and was left defenseless to the enterprises of the black- 
guards who frequented the house. If her mother had 
taken any notice of her, it would probably have been only 
to profit by her youth and trade on her beauty and inno- 
cence. In one way or another the fate that awaited her 
was not in doubt. This pained me, for she was a charm- 
ing little creature who was assuredly deserving of better 
things, a pearl of the finest water lost in that infectious 
slough; the thought of it affected me so far that I re 
solved to get her at all costs out of that frightful house. 

‘ ‘ The first thing to be done was to prevent the chevalier 
from pursuing his design. I thought that the best and 
simplest way was to pick a quarrel with him and make 
him fight a duel, and I had all the trouble in the world 
to do so, for he is as cowardly as he can be and dreads 
blows more than any one. ( At last I said so many sting- 
ing things to him, that he '‘was obliged to make up his 
mind to come on the ground, although it was greatly against 


392 


MADEMOISELLE DE M A UP IN 


the grain. I even threatened to have him cudgelled by 
my footman if he did not put a better face on it. Never- 
theless he could handle his sword well enough, but he 
was so confused by fear that we had hardly crossed our 
weapons when I was able to administer a nice little 
thrust which sent him to bed for a fortnight. This satis- 
fied me; I had no wish to kill him, and would as soon have 
let him live to be hanged later on — a touching attention 
for which he ought to have been more grateful to me! 
My rogue being stretched between a pair of sheets and 
duly trussed with bandelets, it only remained to induce 
the little one to leave the house, which was not extremely 
difficult. 

“ I told her a story about her lover’s disappearance, 
which was giving her extraordinary anxiety. I informed 
her that he had gone off with an actress belonging to the 

company then at C , which, as you may believe, made 

her very indignant. But I consoled her by speaking ill 
in every way of the chevalier, who was ugly, drunken, 
and already old, and I ended by asking her whether she 
would not rather have me for a wooer. She replied that 
she would, because I was handsomer and my clothes 
were new. This artlessness, spoken with enormous 
seriousness, made me laugh till I cried. I turned the 
little one’s head and succeeded in inducing her to leave 
the house. A few boquets, about as many kisses, and a 
pearl necklace that I gave her, charmed her to an extent 
difficult to describe, and she assumed an important air in 
the presence of her little friends which was extremely 
laughable. 

had a very rich and elegant page’s costume of 
about her size made, for I could not take her away in her 
girl’s dress, unless I myself resumed female attire, which 
I was unwilling to do. I bought a pony, which was 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


393 


gentle and easy to ride, and yet a sufficiently good courser 
to follow my barb when it was my pleasure to go quickly. 
Then I told the fair one to try to come down at dusk to 
the door, where I would call for her; and this she very 
punctually did. I found her mounting guard behind the 
the half-opened door. I passed very close to the house; 
she came out, I stretched out my hand to her, she rested 
her foot on the tip of mine, and jumped very nimbly up 
behind me, for she possessed marvellous agility. I 
spurred my horse, and succeeded in returning home 
through seven or eight circuitous and deserted lanes with- 
out anyone seeing us. 

<‘I made her exchange her clothes for her disguise, 
and myself acted as her maid; at first she made a little 
fuss, and wished to dress all alone; but I made her 
understand that this would waste a great deal of time; 
that, moreover, being my mistress, it was not in the least 
improper, and that such was the custom between lovers. 
This was quite enough to convince her, and she yielded 
to circumstances with the best grace in the world. 

Her body was a little marvel of delicacy. She had 
still all the graces of the child, and already all the charm 
of the woman; she was in that adorable transition period 
when the little girl is blended with the young girl; a 
blending fugitive and impalpable, a delicious epoch 
when beauty is full of hope, and when every day, instead 
of taking something from your love, adds new perfections 
to it. 

Her costume became her extremely well. It gave 
her a little unruly air, which was very curious and divert- 
ing, and made her burst out laughing when I offered her 
the glass to let her judge of the effect of her toilet. I after- 
wards made her eat some biscuits dipped in Spanish 


394 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


wine, in order* to give her courage and enable her better 
to support the fatigue of the journey. 

‘^The horses were waiting ready saddled in the court- 
yard; she mounted hers with some deliberation, I be- 
strode the other, and we set out. Night had completely 
fallen, and occasional lights, which were being ex- 
tinguished every moment, showed that the honest town 

of C was virtuously engaged as every country town 

ought to be on the stroke of nine. 

‘‘We could not go very quickly, for Ninon was no 
better horsewoman than she ought to have been, and 
when her beast b^egan to trot she would cling with all her 
might to his mane. However, on the following morning 
we were too far away to be overtaken, at all events un- 
less extraordinary diligence had been employed; but we 
were not pursued, or at least, if we were, it was in an 
opposite direction to that which we had taken. 

“ I was singularly interested in the little fair one. I 
no longer had you with me, my dear Graciosa, and I 
was immensely sensible of the need of loving somebody 
or something, of having a dog or a child with me to ca- 
ress familiarly. Ninon was this to me; she shared my 
bed and put her little arms around my body to go to 
sleep; she most seriously thought herself my mistress, 
and had no doubt that I was a man; her great youth and 
extreme innocence preserved her in this error which I 
was not careful to dissipate. The kisses that I gave 
her quite completed her illusion, for her ideas went, as 
yet, no further, and her desires did not speak loudly 
enough to cause her to suspect anything else. After all, 
she was only partly mistaken 

“And, really, there was the same difference between 
her and me, as there is between myself and men. She 
was so diaphanous, so slender, so light, of so delicate and 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


395 


choice a nature, that she was a woman even to me who 
am myself a woman, and who look like a Hercules beside 
her. I am tall and dark, she is small and blonde; her 
features are so soft that they make mine appear almost 
hard and austere, and her voice is so melodious a warble 
that mine seems harsh in comparison. If a man had her 
he would break her in pieces, and I always feel afraid 
that the wind will carry her off some fine morning. I 
should like to enclose her in a box of cotton and wear her 
hanging about my neck. You can have no conception, 
my dear friend, of her grace and wit, hej; delicious coax- 
ing, her childlike endearments, her little ways and pretty 
manners. She is the most adorable creature in existence, 
and it would have been truly a pity had she remained with 
her unworthy mother. 

I took a malicious joy in thus depriving men’s rapac- 
ity of such a treasure. I was the griffin preventing all 
approach, and, if I did not enjoy her myself at least no 
one else enjoyed her — an idea which is always consoling, 
let all the foolish detractors of egotism say what they 
will. 

I intended to preserve her in her ignorance as long as 
possible, and to keep her with me until she was unwilling 
to stay any longer, or I had succeeded in securing a 
settlement for her. 

‘‘In her boy’s dress I took heron all my journeys, 
right and left; this mode of life gave her singular pleas- 
ure, and the charm that she found in it assisted her to 
endure its fatigues. Everywhere I was complimented 
on the exquisite beauty of my page, and I have no doubt 
that it gave many people a precisely contrary idea of 
what was actually the case. Several even tried to un- 
ravel the mystery; but I did not allow the little one to 


396 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


speak to anybody, and the curious were completely 
disappointed. 

Every day I discovered some new quality in this 
amiable child which made me cherish her more and con- 
gratulate myself on the resolution I had taken. Assuredly 
men were not worthy to possess her, and it would have 
been a deplorable thing if so many bodily and spiritual 
charms had been surrendered to their brutal appetites 
and cynical depravity. 

‘^Only a woman could love her with sufficient delicacy 
and tenderness. One side of my character, which could 
not have been developed in a different connection and 
which was completely brought out in the present one, is 
the need and desire of affording protection, a duty which 
usually belongs to men. If I had taken a lover it would 
have displeased me extremely to find him assuming to 
defend me, for the reason that this is an attention I love 
to show to those whom I like, and that my pride is much 
better suited with the first role than with the second, al- 
though the second may be more agreeable. Thus I felt 
pleased in paying my little darling all the attentions 
which I ought to have liked to receive, such as assisting 
her on difficult roads, holding her bridle or stirrup, serv- 
ing her at table, undressing her and putting her to bed, 
defending her if any one insulted her; in short, doing 
everything for her that the most impassioned and atten- 
tive lover does for a mistress he adores. 

I was insensibly losing the idea of my sex, and it was 
with difficulty that I remembered, at considerable inter- 
vals, that I was a woman; at first I often forgot myself, 
and unthinkingly said something that did not harmonize 
with the coat I wore. Now this never happens, and even 
when writing to you, to you who are in my secret, I some- 
times preserve a useless virility in my adjectives. If ever 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


397 


I take a fancy to go and look for my skirts in the drawer 
where I left them — which I think very doubtful, unless I 
fall in love with some young spark — I shall find it diffi- 
cult to lose these habits, and, instead of being a woman 
disguised as a man, I shall look like a man disguised as 
a woman. In truth, neither of the two sexes are mine; 
I have not the imbecile submission, the timidity or the 
littleness of women; I have not the vices, the disgusting 
intemperance, or the brutal propensities of men. I be- 
long to a third, distinct sex, which as yet has no name; 
higher or lower, more defective or superior; I have the 
body and soul of a woman, the mind and power of a man, 
and I have too much or too little of both to be able to 
pair with either. 

‘‘O Graciosa! I shall never be able to completely love 
any one, man or woman; an unsated something ever 
chides within me, and the lover or friend answers only 
to a single aspect of my character. If I had a lover, the 
feminine element in me would doubtless for a time domi- 
nate over the manly, but this would not last for long, and 
I feel that I should be only half satisfied. 

<< My chimera would be to have both sexes in turn in 
order to satisfy this double nature; a man to-day, a woman 
to-morrow, for my lovers I should keep my langorous 
tenderness, my submissive and devoted ways, my softest 
caresses, my little sadly-drawn sighs, all the cat-like and 
woman-like elements in my character; then with my mis- 
tresses I should be enterprising, bold, impassioned, with 
triumphant manners, my hat on my ear, and the style of 
a boaster aud adventurer. My nature would thus be en- 
tirely brought out, and I should be perfectly happy, for 
true happiness consists in the ability to develop freely in 
every direction and to be all that it is possible to be. 


398 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


‘‘But these are impossibilities and are not to be 
thought of. 

“ I had carried off the child with the idea of deluding 
my propensities and turning upon some one all the vague 
tenderness which floats in my soul and floods it; I had 
taken her as a sort of escape for my loving faculties; but 
I soon recognized, in spite of all the affection that I bore 
her, what an immense void, what a bottomless abyss she 
left in my heart, and how little her tenderest caresses 
contented me! I resolved to try a lover, but a long time 
passed and I met no one who did not displease me. I 
forgot to tell you that Rosette, having discovered whither 
I was gone, had written me the most beseeching letter to 
go and see her; I could not refuse her, and I met her 
again at a country house where she was. I returned 
there several times, and even quite lately. Rosette, in 
despair at not having had me for her lover, had thrown 
herself into the whirl of society and dissipation, like all 
tender souls that are not religious and that have been 
wounded in their first love; she had had many adventures 
in a short time, and the list of her conquests was already 
very numerous, for every one had not the same reasons 
for resisting her that I had. 

“She had with her a young man named D’ Albert, who 
was at the time her established lover. I appeared to 
make quite a peculiar impression upon him, and at the 
very first he took a strong liking to me. 

“Although he treated Rosette with great deference, 
and his manners towards her were in the main tender 
enough, he did not love her — not owing to satiety or dis- 
taste, but rather because she did not correspond to cer- 
tain ideas, true or false, which he had formed concern- 
ing love and beauty. An ideal cloud interposed between 
him and her, and prevented him from being as happy as 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA VEIN 


399 


otherwise he must have been. Evidently his dream was 
not fulfilled, and he sighed for something else. But he 
did not seek for it, and remained faithful to the bonds 
which weighed on him; for he has more delicacy and 
honor in his soul than most men, and his heart is very 
far from being as corrupted as his mind. Not knowing 
that Rosette had never been in love except with me, and 
that she was so still in spite of all her intrigues and fol- 
lies, he had a dread of distressing her by letting her see 
that he did not love her. It was this consideration that 
restrained him, and he was sacrificing himself in the most 
generous way. 

^^The character of my features gave him extraordinary 
pleasure, for he attaches extreme importance to external 
form; so much so that he fell in love with me in spite of 
my male attire and the formidable rapier which I wear at 
my side. I confess that I was grateful to him for the 
acuteness of his instinct, and that I held him in some es- 
teem for having distinguished me beneath these delusive 
appearances. At the beginning he believed himself en- 
dowed with a fancy far more depraved than it really was, 
and I laughed inwardly to see him torment himself in 
this way. Sometimes, when accosting me he had a 
frightened look which amused me immensely, and the 
very natural inclination which drew him towards me ap- 
peared to him as a dibolical impulse which could not be 
too strougly resisted. On such occasions he would fall 
back furiously on Rosette, and endeavor to recover more 
orthodox habits of love; then he would come back to me, 
of course more inflamed than before. 

‘‘Than the luminous idea that I might perhaps be a 
woman crept into his mind. To convince himself of this 
he set himself to observe and study me with the minutest 
attention; he must be acquainted with every particular 


400 


MADEMOISELLE DE MUAPIN 


hair, and know accurately how many eyelashes I have on 
my lids; feet, hands, neck, cheeks, the slightest down 
at the corner of my lips, he examined, compared, and 
analyzed them all, and from this investigation, 
in which the artist aided the lover, it came out as clear 
as day (when it is clear), that I was well and duly a 
woman, and, moreover, his ideal, the type of his beauty, 
the reality of his dream — a wonderful discovery! 

It only remained to soften me, and obtain the gift of 
amorous mercy, to completely establish my sex. A 
comedy which we acted, and in which I peared as a 
woman, quite decided him. I gave him some equivocal 
glances, and made use of some passages in my part, 
analogous to our own situation, to embolden him and 
impel him to declare himself. F or, if I did not passionately 
love him, he pleased me well enough not to let him pine 
away with love; and, as he was the first since my trans- 
formation to suspect that I was a woman, it was quite 
fair that I should enlighten him on this important point, 
and I was resolved not to leave him a shadow of doubt. 

‘‘Several times he came into my room with his de- 
claration on his lips, but he dared not utter it; for, indeed, 
it is difficult to speak of love to one who is dressed like 
yourself, and is trying on riding boots. At last, unable 
to take it upon himself to do this, he wrote me a long, 
very Pindaric letter, in which he explained to me at great 
length what I knew better than he did. 

“ I do not quite know what I ought to do. Admit his 
request or reject it — the latter would be immoderately 
virtuous; besides, his grief at finding himself refused 
would be too great — if we make people who love us un- 
happy, what are we to do to those who hate us ? It 
makes me laugh to see those methodical Lucretias walk- 
ing backwards with the tokens of maidenly terror, and 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


401 


from time to time casting a furtive glance over their 
shoulder to make sure that the sofa on which they are to 
fall is quite directly behind them. I could never be as 
careful as that. 

do not love D’ Albert, at least in the sense which I 
give to the word, but I have certainly a liking and an in- 
clination for him; his mind pleases me and his person 
does not repel me — there are not many people of whom 
I can say as much. He has not everything, but he has 
something^ what pleases me in him is that he does not 
seek to satiate himself brutally like other men; he has 
a perpetual aspiration and an ever sustained breathing 
after beauty — after material beauty alone, it is true, but 
still it is a noble inclination, and one which is sufficient 
to keep him in pure regions. His conduct towards Ro- 
sette proves honesty of heart, an honesty rarer than the 
other, if that be possible. 

Since D’ Albert has recognized me beneath my dis- 
guise, it is quite fair that he should be rewarded for his 
penetration; he was the first to divine that I was a 
woman, and I shall prove to him to the best of my abil- 
ity that his suspicions were well founded. It would be 
scarcely charitable to let him believe that his fancy was 
solely a monstrous one. 

Albert it is, then, who will solve my doubts and 
give me my first lesson in love. The only question now 
is to bring the matter about in quite a poetical fashion. 
I am inclined not to reply to his letter and to look coldly 
on him for a few days. When I see him very sad and 
despairing, inveighing against the gods, shaking his fist 
at creation, and looking down the wells to see whether 
they are not too deep to throw himself into them, I shall 
retire like Peau d’Ane to the end of the corridor, and put 
on my light-blue dress, that is to say. my costume as 

Maupin— 25 


402 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


Rosalind; for my feminine wardrobe is very limited. 
Then I shall go to him as radiant as a peacock displaying 
its feathers, ostentatiously showing what I usually con- 
ceal with the greatest care, and shall say to him in the 
most pathetic tone that I can assume — 

‘‘ ‘ O most elegiac and perspicacious young man! I 
am truly a young and modest beauty and one who adores 
you into the bargain. 

I also propose to go and pay a visit to Rosette in 
the same costume and to show her that, if I have not re- 
sponded to her love, it was not from coldness or distaste. 
I do not wish her to preserve such a bad opinion of me, 
and she deserves, equally with D’Albert, that I should 
betray my incognito in her favor. How will she look at 
this revelation? Her pride will be consoled by it, but her 
love will lament it. 

^‘Good-bye, most fair and good one; pray to heaven 
that I may not think as little of the pleasure as I do of 
those who afford it. I have jested throughout this letter, 
and yet what I am going to essay is a serious matter and 
something which may affect the rest of my life.'’ 







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CHAPTER XVI 

It was already more than a fortnight since D’Albert 
had laid his letter on Theodore’s table, and yet there 
seemed to be no change in the manner of the latter. 
D’Albert did not know how to account for this. silence; 
one would have imagined that Theodore had had no 
knowledge of the letter; the rueful D’Albert thought that 
it had gone astray or been lost; yet this was difficult of 
explanation, for Theodore had re-entered his room a 
a moment afterwards, and it would have been very extra- 
ordinary if he had not perceived a large paper placed 
quite by itself in the middle of a table so as the attract 
the notice of the most inattentive. 

Or was Theodore perhaps really a man and not a 
woman at all, as D’Albert had imagined to himself ? or, 
supposing her a woman, had she so deceided a feeling of 
aversion to him, or such a contempt for him that she 
would not condescend even to take the trouble of giving 
him a reply ? The poor young man who had not, like 
ourselves, the advantage of searching the portfolio of 
Graciosa, the confidante of the fair Mademoiselle de 
Maupin, was not in a position to decide any of these im- 
portant questions either in the affirmative or in the nega- 
tive, and he was mournfully wavering in the most 
wretched irresolution. 


403 


404 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


One evening he was in his room, his brow pressed with 
melancholy against the window-pane, and was looking, 
without seeing them, at the already bare and reddened 
chestnut-trees in the park. The distance was bathed in 
a thick mist, a gray rather than black night was falling, 
and cautiously placing its velvety feet on the summits of 
trees; a large swan was amorously dipping and redip- 
ping its neck and shoulders in the steaming water of the 
river, and in its whiteness made it appear in the shadow 
like a large star of snow. It was the only living thing to 
give a little animation to the gloomy landscape. 

D’Albert was thinking as sadly as a disappointed man 
can think at five o’clock on a misty autumn evening with 
a somewhat sharp north wind for music, and the wigless 
skeleton of a forest for a prospect. 

He thought of throwing himself into the river, but the 
water seemed very black and cold to him, and the swans’ 
example only half persuaded him; of blowing his brains 
out, but he had neither pistol nor powder, and he would 
have been very sorry to have had them; of taking a new 
mistress, or, sinister resolution, even two! but he knew 
none who would suit him, even none who would not suit 
him. In his despair he went so far as to wish to resume 
his connection with women who were perfectly insupport- 
able to him, and whom he had had horsewhipped out of 
his house by his footman. He ended by resolving upon 
something much more frightful — to write a second letter. 

O sextuple booby! 

He was at this stage of his meditations, when he felt a 
hand place itself on his shoulder, like a little dove de- 
scending on a palm tree. The comparison halts some- 
what inasmuch as D’Albert’s shoulder bore a very slight 
resemblance to a palm-tree; but, all the same, we shall 
keep it in a spirit of pure Orientalism. 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


405 


The hand was at the extremity of an arm which corre- 
sponded to a shoulder forming part of a body, which was 
nothing else but Theodore- Rosalind, Mademoiselle d’Au- 
bigny, or Madelaine de Maupin, to call her by her real 
name. 

Who was astonished ? Neither I nor you, for you and 
I had long been prepared for this visit; but D’Albert who 
had not been expecting it in the least. He gave a little 
cry of suprise half-way between oh! and ah! Neverthe- 
less I have the best reason for believing that it was more 
like ah! than oh! 

It was indeed Rosalind, so beautiful and radiant that 
she lit up the whole room, with her strings of pearls in 
her hair, her prismatic dress, her laces, her red-heeled 
shoes, her handsome fan of peacock’s plumes, such, in 
short, as she had been on the day of the performance. 
Only — and this was an important and decisive difference 
— she wore neither gorget, nor chemisette, nor ruff, nor 
anything to hide from view those two charming unfriendly 
brothers, who, alas! have only too often a tendency to 
become reconciled. 

A bosom entirely bare, white, transparent, like an 
ancient marble, of the purest and most exquisite cut, pro- 
jected boldly from a very low dress body, and seemed to 
bid defiance to kisses. It was a most reassuring sight; 
accordingly D’Albert was very quickly reassured, and he 
abandoned himself in all confidence to his most disorderly 
emotions. 

‘‘Well! Orlando, do you not recognize your Rosa- 
lind ? ” said the fair one with the most charming smile; 
“ or have you, perhaps, left your love hanging with your 
sonnets on some bushes in the forest of Arden ? Are you 
really cured of the sickness for which you requested a 


4o6 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


remedy from me with such earnestness ? I am very much 
afraid so.” 

‘^Oh no! Rosalind, I am more sick than ever. I am 
in extremity; I am dead, or very nearly! ” 

‘‘You have not a bad appearance for a dead man; many 
living persons do not look so well.” 

“What a week I have spent! You cannot imagine it, 
Rosalind. I hope that it will be equivalent to a thousand 
years of purgatory to me in the next world. But, if I 
dare ask you, why did you not reply to me sooner? ” 
“Why? I scarcely know, unless it is because I did 
not. However, if this motive does not appear a valid 
one to you, here are three others not nearly so good, from 
which you shall choose: first, because carried away by 
your passion you forgot to write legibly, and it took me 
more than a week to make out what your letter was about; 
next, because my modesty could not reconcile itself in a 
shorter time to such an absurd idea as to take a dithyram- 
bic poet for a lover; and then because I was not sorry to 
see whether you would blow your brains out, or poison 
yourself with opium, or hang yourself. There! ” 

“Naughty banterer! I assure you that you have done 
well to come to-day, for perhaps you would not have 
found me to-morrow. ” 

“Really! poor fellow! Do not assume such a doleful 
air, for I should also be affected, and that would make 
me more stupid in myself alone than all the animals that 
were in the ark with the deceased Noah. If once I open 
the sluice for my sensibility, I warn you that you will be 
drowned. Just now I gave you three bad reasons I now 
offer you three good kisses; will you accept them, on the 
condition that you forget the reasons for the kisses ? I 
owe you as much and more. ” 

As she uttered these words the fair infanta advanced 


MADEMOISELLE' DE MA UPIN 


407 

towards the mournful lover, and threw her beautiful bare 
arms round his neck. D’Albert kissed her effusively on 
the cheeks and mouth. This last kiss had a longer dura- 
tion than the others, and might have been counted as four. 
Rosalind saw that all she had done until then had been 
only pure childishness. Her debt discharged, she sat 
down, still greatly moved, on D’Albert’s knees, and, pass- 
ing her fingers through his hair, she said to him — • 

All my cruelties are exhausted, sweet friend; I took 
the fortnight to satisfy my natural ferocity; I will confess 
to you that I found it long. Don’t become a coxcomb 
because I am frank, but it is true. I place myself in your 
hands, revenge yourself for my past harshness. If you 
were a fool I should not say this, or even aihything else 
to you, for I do not like fools. It would have been very 
easy for me to make you believe that I was prodigiously 
shocked by your boldness, and that all your Platonic 
sighs and your most quintessential nonsense was not suf- 
ficient to procure you forgiveness for a thing of which I 
was very glad; I might, like another, have bargained with 
you for a long time and retailed to you what I am now 
granting you freely and at once; but I do not think that 
this would have increased your love for me by the thick- 
ness of a single hair. 

“ I do not ask of you an oath of eternal love nor any 
exaggerated protestation. Love me as much as heaven 
ordains— I will do as much on my side. I will not call 
you a traitor or a wretch when you have ceased to love 
me. You will also have the kindnes to spare me the 
corresponding odious titles, should I happen to leave you. 
I shall be merely a woman who has ceased to love you— 
nothing more. It is not necessary to hate each other all 
through life because of a night or two passed together. 
Whatever may happen, and wherever destiny may drive 


4o8 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UP IN 


me, I swear to you, and this is a promise that can be 
kept, that I shall always preserve a charming recollection 
of you, and, that if I am no longer your mistress, I shall 
be your friend as I have been your comrade. For you I 
have laid aside my male attire to-night; I shall resume it 
to-morrow for all ! Think that I am only Rosalind at night, 
and that throughout the day I am and can be only Theo- 
dore de Serannes — ” 

The sentence she was about to utter was stifled by a 
kiss followed by many others, which were no longer 
counted and of which we shall not give an exact catalogue, 
because it would certainly be rather tedious and perhaps 
very immoral — for some people; as to ourselves, we think 
nothing more moral and sacred under heaven than the 
caresses of man and woman, when they are handsome 
and young. 

As D’Albert’s importunities became more amorous and 
eager, Theodore’s beautiful face, instead of being smiling 
and radiant, assumed an expression of proud melancholy 
which caused her lover some disquiet. 

Why, dear sovereign, have you the chaste and serious 
air of an antique Diana now, when we should rather have 
the smiling lips of Venus rising from the sea?” 

You see, D’ Albert, it is because I am more like the 
huntress Diana than anything else. When very young I 
assumed man’s attire for reasons which it would be tedious 
and useless to tell you. You alone divined my sex, and, 
if I have made conquests, they have only been over 
women — very superfluous, conquests, which have em- 
barassed me more than once. I am grave as every one 
is when about to do a thing on which it is impossible to 
go back. It is a metamorphosis, a transformation that I 
am about to undergo — to change the name of girl into 
the name of woman, to no longer have to-morrow what I 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


409 

had yesterday; something that I did not know and am 
going to learn, an important page turned in the book of 
life. It is for that reason that I am sad, my friend, and 
not on account of any fault of yours. ” 

As she said this she parted the young man’s hair with 
her two beautiful hands, and laid her softly puckered lips 
upon his pale forehead. h: * * * * 

Our fair reader would certainly pout at her lover if we 
revealed to her the formidable total of the lessons im- 
parted by D’Albert’s love, assisted by Rosalind’s curios- 
ity. Let her lay her book aside and compute how much 
she was loved by him who loved her most, and thus fill 
up the void left by us in this glorious history. 

The next morning, instead of returning to her own room 
Rosalind entered Rosette’s. What she there said and did I 
have never been able to ascertain, although I have made 
the most conscientious researches. Neither in Graciosa’s 
papers, nor in those belonging to D’Albert and Silvio, 
have I found anything having relation to this visit. I 
leave it to the reader’s sagacity, and give him liberty to 
draw thence any inferences that he likes; for myself, I 
have made a thousand conjectures about it, each more 
unreasonable than the rest, and so absurd that I really 
dare not write them even in the most virtuously peri- 
phrastic style. 

It was quite noon when Theodore who acted the part of 
Rosalind left Rosette’s room. He did not appear at 
dinner or supper. D’Albert and Rosette did not seem at 
all surprised at this. He went to bed very early, and the 
following morning, as soon as it was light, without giving 
notice to any one, he saddled his page’s horse and his 
own, and left the mansion, telling a footman that they 
were not to wait dinner for him, and that he might per- 
haps not return for a few days. 


410 


MADEAIOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


D’Albert and Rosette were extremely astonished, and 
did not know how to account for this strange disappear- 
ance. Towards the end of the week, the unhappy disap- 
pointed lover received from Theodore a letter, which we 
shall transcribe. I am afraid that it will satisfy neither 
my male nor my female readers; but the letter was in 
truth none other than that which follows, and this glori- 
ous romance will have no other conclusion. 


CHAPTER XVII 

You are no doubt greatly surprised, my dear D’ Al- 
bert, at what I have just done after acting as I did. I 
will allow you to be so, for you have reason. The odds 
are that you have already bestowed upon me at least 
twenty of the epithets that we had agreed to erase from 
our vocabulary — perfidious, inconstant, wicked — is it not 
so ? At least you will not call me cruel or virtuous, and 
that is still something gained. You curse me, and you 
are wrong. You desired me, you loved me, I was your 
ideal — very well. 

It would last six months, two years, ten years even, 
if you will, but still everything must have an end. You 
would keep me from a kind of feeling of propriety, or be- 
cause you would not have the courage to give me my 
dismissal. What would be the use of waiting until mat- 
ters came to this ? 

And then, it might perhaps be myself who would 
cease to love you. I have found you charming; perhaps, 
by dint of seeing you, I might have come to find you de- 
testable. Forgive me this supposition. Living with you 
in close intimacy, I should no doubt have had occasion 
to see you in a cotton cap or in some ridiculous or face- 
tious domestic situation. You would necessarily have 
lost the romantic and mysterious side which allures me 

411 


412 


MADEMOISELLE DE MA UPIN 


more than anything else, and your character, when bet- 
ter understood, would no longer have appeared so strange 
to me. I should have been less taken up with you through 
having you beside me, in something like the fashion in 
which we treat those books that we never open because 
they are in our libraries. Your nose or your wit would 
no longer have seemed nearly so well turned; I should 
have perceived that your coat did not fit you and that 
your stockings were untidy; I should have had a thousand 
deceptions of this kind which would have given me sin- 
gular pain, and at last I should have come to this conclu- 
sion: that you decidedly had neither heart nor soul, and 
that I was destined to be misunderstood in love. 

You adore me and I you. You have not the slight- 
est reproach to make against me, and I have nothing in 
the world to complain of in you. I have been perfectly 
faithful to you throughout our amour. I have deceived 
you in nothing. I had neither false bosom nor false vir- 
tue; you had the extreme kindness to tell me that I was 
yet more beautiful than you had imagined. 

“You believe, perhaps, that I do not love you because 
I am leaving you. Later, you will recognize the truth of 
the contrary. Had I loved you less, I should have re- 
mained, and would have poured out to you the insipid 
beverage to the dregs. Your love would soon have died 
of weariness; after a time you would have quite forgotten 
me, and, as you read over my name on the list of your 
conquests, would have asked yourself: ‘Now, who the 
deuce was she ? ’ I have at least the satisfaction of think- 
ing that you will remember me sooner than another. 
Your unsated desire will again spread its wings to fly to 
me. 

“ Never will you be more amiable than you were that 
blissful evening, and, even were you equally so, it would 


MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN 


413 


still be something less; for in love, as in poetry, to re. 
main at the same point is to go back. Keep to that im- 
pression, and you will do well. 

<< You have rendered the task of the lovers I may have 
(if I have other lovers) a difficult one, and no one will be 
able to efface the memory of you; they will be the heirs 
of Alexander. 

‘‘If you are too much grieved at losing me, burn this 
letter, which is the only proof that you have possessed 
me, and you will believe that you have had a beautiful 
dream. What is there to hinder you ? The vision has 
vanished before the light, at the hour when dreams re- 
turn home through the horn or the ivory gate. How 
many have died, who, less fortunate than you, have not 
even given a single kiss to their chimera! 

“I am neither capricious, nor mad, nor a conceited 
prude. What I am doing is the result of profound con- 
viction. It is not in order to inflame you more, or from 

calculating coquetry that I have gone away from C ; 

do not try to follow me or to find me again; you will not 
succeed. My precautions to conceal from you all traces 
of myself have been too well taken; you will always be 
for me the man who opened up to me a world of new 
sensations. These are things that a woman does not 
easily forget. Though absent, I shall often think of you, 
oftener than if you were with me. 

“ Comfort poor Rosette as well as you can, for she 
must be at least as sorry for my departure as you are. 
Love each other well in memory of me, whom both of 
you have loved, and breathe my name sometimes in a 
kiss.” 


THE END. 



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